


Going Up?

by Booker (liberoryu)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angsty memories, Author abuses italics, First Kiss, Keith and Lance are Also Dumber Than Bricks, Keith is a Golden (but Slightly Devious Boy), Lance Gets Distracted Because of Keith's Thighs, Lance POV-ish, Lance is hard on himself, M/M, Or it Could Just be an AU, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Selective Omniscient Narrator, Team Punk like to meddle, The omniscient narrator swears as well, What else is new, and that's because his mama taught him well, but i've also been sitting on the first half for three months now and I'm sick of it, idk anymore, keith swears frequently, klance, lance is ... thirsty, lance only swears once, lol, magic capsules, mentions of Veronica, ooh I nearly forgot, pre-season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-04-07 07:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14076210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liberoryu/pseuds/Booker
Summary: “Of course, you’ve been messing with the line the entire time you were here,” Lance says with a resigned sigh. “just leave me be, man.”“You know that’s not happening,” Keith deadpans.“Oh yeah, and who made you my Ma?” Lance folds his arms over his chest and his lips curls into a small sneer. He invades Keith’s space, leaning in contemptuously until their noses almost bump, and jabs a bony finger into Keith’s chest, “I’m going up, Keith, and it doesn’t matter whether you, or Shiro, or just aboutanyoneelse likes it or not.”“For fuck’s sake,Lance.” Keith jumps away from him like someone lit a cracker under his arse, face red and angry. He swipes at Lance’s hand. “You wanna go up? Alright.Fine. But we’re doing it my way.”AKA, Lance can't climb up a cliff face without nearly dying everysingletime and Keith quietly appoints himself as his unlicensed therapist and protector.On a slightly unrelated note, Keith's thighs makes things much harder for Lance than they ought to be.





	1. Up Top

The wall looms over the group huddling close together in front of it. Rocky appendages and twisting vines stick out at irregular intervals, never too far, but not comfortably close either. A gap splits it almost half-way horizontal-wise—a yawning, black chasm to slip into, but then the wall continues onwards, up, up,  _up_ , stopping at a tableau almost fifteen storeys higher than the tallest party member present.

 

The whole ensemble looks out of place within the pristine walls of the training deck. It seems to suck up the light around it and its organic contours makes it look like it’s a giant, breathing …  _fuckwad_  of something.

 

From far within the fissure, something rumbles.

 

“Well then,” says Coran with a wide grin and a flourish. “Here’s to training day number five hundred and twenty-nine!”

 

Allura waves a hand at the wall behind her, “Shiro tells me that you have something like this Galho’od rock back on Earth. They are very useful, yes? Coran grew one for us!”

 

“Is that why the deck’s been out of commission for nearly a  _month_?” Keith grouses from his little nook behind everyone, annoyance written all over his face. “For a  _rock_? I had to practice in my room, I nearly cleaved my bed in half!”

 

“Well, you’ll find lots of Qorium roots growing on these. Great for opening up your  _sinui_  when you have gauzaritis.” says Coran helpfully.

 

He gets a blank stare for that. That line had gone over everyone’s head, except for Allura—she was nodding along to Corans’s mish-mash words. “Also,” he continues, leaning in and looking puzzled. “We have four other training decks on the castle ship, I thought you all knew that.”

 

Keith howls.

 

“ _Sooo_ , uh, no.” Pidge interrupts, sensing a imminent tantrum on Keith’s behalf. The curiosity is evident on her face. “Hell no. I don’t think humans come equipped with a …  _sinui_.”

 

“Oh,” says Coran. “It’s this little cartilage bit at the tip of your nose that expands-”

 

“Nope. I’m good.”

 

Lance looks up at the walls and finds himself unnerved because the pulsing vines creeping along the surface. It’s creepy as fuck but he’d be damned if he knew what it was. The Galho’od rock seems sentient, like something out of a B-list sci-fi. Hunk bends into a weak crouch behind Pidge, who’s looking at the formation with a bland stare, and Keith goes on red alert, his feet planted and sword out. He had gotten used to Coran and Allura’s surprise training antics—and this time, he is ready.

 

Only Shiro seems to have a vague about what’s going on, but as he looks on at the massive wall in front of him, it becomes apparent that he wishes he doesn’t anymore. He shoots Coran an exhausted look but, the crafty old codger turns away from the group with a twirl of his moustache, taking purposeful strides to the foot of the outcropping and cheerfully ignoring everyone.

 

Hunk watches on, as Coran flounces away from them, with a troubled look on his face. “I think it’s going to eat me.” he whispers into Pidge’s ear. Pidge snorts into her hand and gives Hunk a gentle pat to reassure him.

 

Coran turns around with a soft “’ _hem, ‘hem_ ” to bring everyone’s attention back to him. He claps his hands twice and with a  _zwipp_ , the end of a rope slips into one hand, a harness falling into the other.

 

Lance looks up and stills when he sees the pulleys. A lightbulb flickers and then blares into life somewhere at the back of his head and the overwhelming urge to run wells up at the pit of his stomach.

 

Oh no,  _nonononono_.

 

He takes a step back but then digs his heels in before he can change his mind and bolt; if he even gets past the doors, he pretty sure he’s still going to hurl.

 

 _This is a terrible idea._  His brain helpfully supplies.

 

His eyes dart around the room, assessing his teammates reactions. No one has seen him, so he lets out a heavy exhale and plasters on his trademark shit-eating grin. It looks wonky and a little hysterical but, for now, it covers his ass for him.

 

“Holy crow, it’s a climbing wall, guys!” he says in a loud voice. “ _Fun_!” Keith shoots him an indecipherable look — something that makes Lance falter, but before he can even register it completely, it morphs into the usual exasperated, eye-brow raising quirk that he’s used to. Lance shakes off the feeling of unease that sets into his bones, it’s just his nerves.

 

The other paladins start to move. Pidge has gone ahead and grabbed the harness out of Coran’s hands. “Make way for Spider-fucking-man!” she crows with a manic gleam in her eyes. Keith steps up behind her and pulls the harness back from her hands before she has a chance to slip it on with a teasing smirk.

 

“You mean me?” he says coyly.

 

Pidge growls and reaches back for the harness, but it’s up above her head, dangling like a carrot in front a rabid rabbit. They stand there, squabbling over the harness for a minute or two while Lance lets out an almost silent groan.

 

It’s just  _so_  frustrating.

 

The only time Keith looks this animated is when he gets a chance to exert himself until he passes out (or, you know, when he finds a knife stand at a swap mall). The anticipation in his eyes, his proud smirk, and his flushed cheeks almost make Lance want to climb up with him of his own volition just so he would be a bit closer to the boy, but he quells his thoughts before they jump headfirst down a rabbit hole that he is not ready to tackle at the moment and goes back to fretting in his place. His fingers start to tap a frantic staccato against his thighs. He idly thinks it might have been  _Stayin’ Alive._

 

He shakes his head to drive away his errant thoughts. Right now, he has a bigger fish to fry.

 

Hunk and Lance move in closer together, subconsciously seeking comfort from the other. They don’t say anything between themselves, but both are reluctant to go anywhere near the wall—although Lance secretly refuses to let everyone in on the full scale of his panic. His crooked grin is still hanging on to his face, but it’s starting to look thin and pained.

 

The harness suddenly disappears from Keith’s grip and then Shiro is looming over him and Pidge with it in his hand.

 

“All right then,” Shiro rumbles, “you, gym rat,” he nods at Keith, “and you, Peter Parker,” he looks at Pidge, “We have two harnesses.”

 

Coran claps once again and a second harness appears in his hands. A couple of ticks go by and then Pidge and Keith whoop like the rowdy children they are and start to loop the ropes through their harness belts.

 

Shiro divides the team into two groups and then hangs back with Allura and Coran. The Princess and Black Paladin decide to go together after the first team completes a circuit.

 

Pidge and Lance are paired up and Lance does not even need to try to sneakily convince her to go first because she is already so pumped up. It works just great for him because Pidge always wises up in time when Lance tries to pull a quick one on her and then his whole operation ends up being a massive bust. Sending a quick, mental  _thankyouthankyouthankyou_  to whatever deity that decided to help his sorry ass out, he helps her tighten the straps at her waist and secures the looped rope in the middle with a deft, extra knot, “for safety” he says, with a nervous edge to his voice. Pidge gives him a raised eyebrow but then chuckles good-naturedly.

 

Lance is dismayed that there were two harnesses. He figured that maybe he could have tried to go last—sorry Hunk—and somehow stall until he could have come up with an appropriate excuse to get away. He had spent his year at the Garrison doing just that—actively working on ways to dodge out of height training because he just. Could. Not.  _Deal_.

 

“Ugh.” He says.

 

Pidge’s off and already seven feet up the wall before Lance has a chance to grab his end of the rope and loop it through the pulley attached to his belt.

 

As she continues to scramble up the wall, Lance tightens his hold on his rope and takes the chance to thank his lucky stars that Coran and Allura had allowed them to use their suits because he trusts his; the thing has jet thrusters packed onto it and as long as he has that, Lance knows he is safe(r) and has a better chance of not cracking a cold one against the floor of the deck when he eventually falls off.

 

“You doing all right there, gremlin?” he calls out from him spot at the bottom when Pidge pauses for the first time.

 

“Just peachy” she grunts back. “It’s just goes on longer than I thought.”

 

Lance frowns and tugs lightly at the rope, “You could come down if you want.”

 

She scoffs at his words. “As if! You’re starting to sound like Shiro, dude—all worried-like. Trying to give SpaceDad a run for his money, eh?”

 

Lance snarks back with a negative and sticks his tongue out at her. He hears the others snicker – save for Shiro, who lets out an indignant splutter.

 

A couple of minutes later, Pidge is just four feet away from the crevasse. She has a grip on a sturdy vine above her head and her feet are secured on a protruding rock below her. She links her rope to the next draw and readies herself for the big jump. As she tries to swing herself up, however, the vine suddenly twists inwards.

 

With a yelp, Pidge plummets.

 

Lance’s heart falls to his stomach in tandem with Pidge’s descent and his knuckles go blue as he grips the rope hard as he can.

 

“Hang on Pidge!” he screams.

 

Lance feels the rope go slack, and pulls, and pulls and keeps pulling until he realises that he’s pulling an excess of free rope because Pidge has ended up activating her pack—shooting over the crevasse— and is crouched on the upper lip of the gap. She looks at him with concern in her eyes and Lance is suddenly all too aware that everyone else has also stopped what they were doing and were looking over at them as well.

 

He is also sweating buckets.

 

“Hey, you doing all right over there?” Pidge parrots. She says it lightly, but her eyebrows furrow and Lance is met with a piercing stare.

 

“H-huh? Yeah! I’m totally f-fine!” Lance stammers and he’s doing his best to flash her his megawatt smile, but he knows that it’s all teeth and no emotion. “I, er, I just …wasn’t prepared to save your gremlin ass like that, that’s all.”  _hah, good one, Lance._

 

Pidge scowls at him, “All right, so first of all – I saved myself, you just screamed and pulled on dead rope. Also, it looked like you were going t-“

 

“I’m  _fine_ , Pidge.” Lance bites out through gritted teeth. The air around him turns tense. “I was taken by surprise and I freaked. Now, quit stalling and hurry the hell up, I want to get something to eat.”

 

“You still have to go next.” She says pointedly from her perch.

 

He ignores her comment. “I’m hungry.” he mouths off childishly. Things aren't looking good for him.

 

“Well then, eat something  _after_  you finish.”

 

The skin around his eyes tighten and his lips pull thinly at the ends. As annoying as this exchange is, Pidge is right — he was going to have to climb up that demon wall after her. Lance’s mind races at warp-speed, tripping over itself and giving him a headache. He needs a way out right now or he was going to throw up all over the floor Coran had him mop up right before practice. That simply would not do.

 

He nods to himself, coming to some conclusion that no one else was privy to. Walking back over to Shiro with a resolute face, he places the rope in his hand. “Don’t let her fall.” He says quickly, moving before Shiro (or anyone else) had a chance to snap to attention and walks out before they try to stop him.

 

"Lance, wait!" that's Keith, probably still up on his perch on the wall—he sounds distraught, but Lance ignores everything in favour of just getting out,  _pronto._

 

The door slid back into place, hiding Lance from the rest of the team. Everyone resumes motion but they’re unsure what to do. Their faces mirror each other; each one completely gobsmacked.

 

“What… just happened?” says Allura.

 

* * *

 

 

“Well, aren’t you smooth.” Lance chides himself.

 

He rounds the corner to his room, shaking his head. He was talking to himself.  _Again_. Lance decides that he’s a certified looney-toon. Allura and Coran had raced after him, questions spilling from their lips, but Lance was adamant about keeping his mouth shut. They might have all suspected whatever, but he had waved them away with weak excuses of a growling stomach and a light head.

 

All he needed was a quick nap was what he had told them.

 

They had backed off eventually, Allura sternly urging him to come down for dinner later that evening before wandering off back towards the deck with Coran following close behind, giving Lance’s shoulder a supportive squeeze with a warm but slightly worried smile on his way out.

 

The door shuts behind Lance and he tumbles across his room to press his face against his window.

 

“You coward.” He hisses at his reflection.

 

He looks past his face to the inky blackness that spreads out ahead of him. Stars pepper the sky and blink mockingly back at him. He wonders why this—being in space—does not scare him. The principle was the same; there's no floor to ground you.

 

Lance screws his eyes shut and pictures himself climbing up the wall.

 

He imagines himself manoeuvring quickly past perilous footholds and vine rungs. Next, he shoots over the edge of the lip, passing the gap and then starts scrambling up past the next twenty feet – he’s almost at the top…

 

…but then he decides to let himself look down.

 

With a gasp, Lance’s eyes shoot open and he’s shaking again just a bit.

 

He curses roughly and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. The bright galaxies that appear in bursts of colour from the pressure swirl fast like little storms behind his eyelids as he tries to will himself to calm down.

 

His hand brushes against his knee, and he starts scrubbing away at a phantom pain from a long time ago, memories of the last time he went climbing popping to the forefront. He tries to stop thinking altogether—It doesn’t really work, but he’s determined to do something about his sudden outburst

 

Lance pushes off towards his bed, shucking off his jacket as he does so and gets into it. He feverishly fusses around for a bit before he pulls a blanket over his head and curls up into a tight ball.

 

Sleep doesn’t come to him for the next few hours, but he starts to think of a way to fix his predicament.

 

He misses dinner.

 

* * *

 

 

“Heights scare the shit outta me.”

 

Lance’s appearance at the table the next morning is expected. His execution— eh, not so much.

 

He had dramatically announced himself a good ten minutes after they had settled down at the table with their idle chatter and plates of goo. It was the bags under his eyes that stopped anyone from playfully snarking back as was their usual course; it just did not seem like the right time or place to do so.

 

He ladles some goo onto his plate and grabs a water pouch from a shelf above him before walking back to take his seat between Pidge and Keith. The palpable silence that greets him is a little tense, but it’s more expectant above anything else. Lance halts for a moment, to take in a breath, before he opens his mouth. Histrionic delivery and all that, there are still a few things that he simply can’t resist doing—being an ass on occasion is one of them. He feels Keith fidgeting impatiently at the side of him and he’s tempted to wait a little longer just to piss him off.

 

But he lets it go and starts his tale.

 

“I visited my oldest sister right after she got married a few years ago,” he begins, . “Veronica had shifted to this little house with her husband up by the Mogote del Valle—very nice sunsets over there, by the way. Totally reminds you of a Ghibli movie. Think  _Howl’s Moving Castle_.”

“Hah, I knew Lance was a closet weeb!” Pidge sniggers at his side.

 

“I wasn’t trying to hide it, stupid.” Lance retorts as he flips Pidge off with both his hands. “Anyways, we had decided to go lead-climbing up this cliff right in her backyard a few days into my stay. It was this thing that we always did together when she was back at home. Our sibling-bonding time or whatever — we always went there together right after one of us got into a fight or was just upset—helped cool our jets even if the fight was between the two of us. It’s a bit strange, I suppose,” he adds with a fond smile on his face. “we just messed around a lot.”

 

“So, this place is huge!” he continues after a beat, drawing out the word and waving his hands in wild circles around him for emphasis. “Back at home, the cliffs we climbed seemed like anthills compared to the Mogote – hell, I could climb those in my sleep and,  _hot-damn_ , am I a shitty climber. That’s the one skillset that my almost-perfect self lacks.” He says humbly, brushing invisible lint off his shoulders.

 

Keith tries to swallow a snort at Lance’s antics, but ends up choking on it instead. It prompts Lance to side-eye him and shoot him a smirk and a friendly wink. Keith starts coughing suddenly, going red in the face.

 

Lance mows on. “I think I’d only managed to climb up some twenty-feet or so before I got tired and climbed back down, but then it was my turn to belay. That’s when things went to shit.”

 

He stops to take a breath and swallows. The others prod him onwards with gentle nods. He gives them all a half-hearted smile.

 

“So Ronnie’s like, this climbing prodigy, yeah? She’s the real MVP – the actual Spider-Man, not you Pidge, sorry-” he smirks at the bespectacled girl next to him, “That was one the biggest reasons she moved so far away from home. That place was perfect for her; she’s reminded me of a monkey in a tree sometimes. She was halfway up this thing now, swinging through some forty feet and everything’s absolutely perfect.”

 

"But then she  _fell_ ,” Lance swallows again and this time, his smile is gone. He was starting to feel like someone had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and shoved a roll of sandpaper down his throat. "The route we took was old and the draw she hooked her rope to was rusted right through but neither of us realised until it was too late.” Lance looks up from where he was anxiously picking at his hands, and back at the team. He sees their horrified faces; Hunk’s pressing his hands way too hard against his mouth and it makes Lance afraid that he is going to eat his gloves for dinner. Allura had grabbed one of her unsuspecting mice sometime during the recounting and was unknowingly squishing the poor thing as she gaped at Lance.

 

He realises that his narrative is a bit unreliable.

 

“Hang on! Wait, wait, wait.” He backtracks. “She’s not  _dead_. Oh, god no. She’s so ridiculously strong and stubborn, you couldn’t get rid of her even if you tried. And uh, Allura, you might want to let go of Platt, he’s turning blue.”

 

Everyone around the table lets out a collective sigh of relief. Allura drops Platt with a barrage of whispered apologies and Pidge pinches Lance’s shoulder for scaring her. He winches, and rubs at the spot. Then he fixes everyone with a stare that makes them feel inexplicably nervous.

 

“She was paralysed waist-down instead.” he says quietly.

 

Shiro, with a look of understanding and sympathy on his face, opens his mouth to say something but Lance gently waves him off because he’s not finished. “It’s all right.” He says with a small smile, now that the hardest part was over. She’s going to get back on her feet, I am sure of it. The docs said that it would have been a miracle if she even got her feeling back but the last time I saw her she was wriggling her toes and swearing up a storm because she just wanted to get out of there; I think she ended up doing it completely out of pure, hellish spite. I know she can get through this.” he adds proudly.

 

“My …  _problem_  right now,” Lance’s mouth goes back to looking a little pinched, and he starts to squirm in his seat, “Is that I still remember everything so vividly—Ronnie’s screams were terrifying and I … was so u-useless.”

 

Keith shoots him a look, one that was full of concern but Lance doesn’t notice—if he had it would have definitely offered him some solace, but his eyes are vacantly trained on a spot on the table as he worries his lips between sentences.

 

“And all that blood,  _good god_. Those were the worst twenty minutes of my life.”

 

“So, yeah,” says Lance, finally looking up at his team with furrowed brows. “I-I can’t climb up stuff right now—I need to have something grounding my feet. Every time I try, I see broken bones and blood, all right? It even freaks me out just watching you guys. S’not hard to picture one of you lot in Ronnie’s place, and the more I try to get rid of that image, the more,” he claws his hands for effect and viciously motions in the air. ”-it just digs into my mind and stays there.”

 

The room goes silent for a bit, the weight of everything that Lance just recounted pressed down on them. They were unsure what the next step is, what to do with... this, because Lance seemed like the last person to carry a personal trauma on his head and just sit on it quietly. Lance was so vibrant and obnoxiously happy. You heard him before you saw him, and he had never sounded as unsure and sad as he did now.

 

Lance, of course, had thought out his little monologue. He helps out.

 

“I just wanted to let you guys know what was going on. But, uh, I’m going to try again. I guess,” he says, but he had almost immediately starts to lose some of his steam and he looks drained. “I don’t want to bring the team down—but, I can’t do this on my own.”

 

He shoots his team a pleading look. They don’t need to be told twice.

 

* * *

 

 

A week had gone by since Lance had told his team about  _the_   _Incident_. After a group consensus, Shiro took the reins and became Lance’s ‘trainer’, for the lack of a better term.

 

Coran and Hunk had never been candidates as neither had much to do with climbing (although Coran seemed enthusiastic. Then again, Coran was enthusiastic about everything and while it was greatly appreciated, it was still, not really ... safe.) Allura and Pidge were also ruled out. Allura, because she had lot on her plate with working the ship with Coran and spearheading the coalition, it was simply not feasible. Pidge was also sent off, because, as skilled as she was scaling up the wall, she was a  _god-awful_  teacher, and lacked the patience to stay on track with what was very likely to be slow paced progress—as demonstrated on the first day Lance had decided to go back to the wall, unfortunately, with her. They had resolved to never speak of whatever had gone down that day.

 

Keith had offered to help. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.” he had said. But the team consensus, bar Lance—who didn’t seem opposed at all—was to send in Shiro.

 

“You’d just be at each other’s throats anyway. I deem this a shit idea.” said Pidge.

 

Mild protests ensued.

 

“We haven’t been like that in, like, forever!” griped Lance.

 

“Yeah, what’s the worst that could happen?” said Keith.

 

“I refuse to answer that, Keith,” said Pidge, with a huff. “the two of you put the pool out of commission last week because you somehow ended up tossing Olkarian ammunition into it.”

 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it right there.” Lance backtracked. “It didn’t blow up because we were fighting- “

 

“Alright then, it  _vaporized_.”

 

“Ugh, we did for science! We were working together!”

 

“How dare you blaspheme!”

 

Keith had backed Lance up. “Look, pools just aren’t meant to be stuck up on the ceiling, all right?”

 

“ _Gravity_!” Pidge hissed, rubbing at her temples. “We! Have! None! In! Space! Goddammit, you idiots. What even gave you the idea that blowing it up would somehow bring it down? Anyway - whatever you two do, it’s still going to end up in a mess.”

 

Hunk had suddenly given Lance a secret, shrewd smile, “Yeah, I bet you’d just be distracted all the time.”

 

Lance flushed, and quickly bowed his head to hide his face before anyone else notices, but not before he shot Hunk a look of betrayal. “Whatever, man.” he croaked, conceding quickly and leaving some confused.

 

* * *

 

 

The first few days is spent clearing basic bodyweight pulls, it wasn’t that Lance needed to do a lot—Voltron’s on-going battle against Zarkon had toughened everybody up, but he had become rusty—his basic climbing instincts lost over the years after Veronica fell. These days are the worst, his legs were a jumble whenever he tried to land a hold. He’d start hyperventilating sometimes or would break into a profuse sweat whenever he tugged the straps tighter on his harness. Shiro remained patient and understanding, pushing at his limits, but never crossing the line. Progress seemed unbearably slow to Lance.

 

He is impatient with his results. It gives him an uncomfortable itch, right under his skin. Coran had planned group climbs, but they were pushed back until Lance got better with his climbing. No one seemed to mind, but nevertheless, Lance still felt bad about it. He decides to push himself as far as he can.

 

Two weeks into Lance’s training find lights that are dim on the training deck with the ship’s automated daylight system easing into an artificial evening. Everyone’s done with supper and have retired to their own quarters for some much needed R&R.

 

Everyone, that is, except Lance and Shiro. They’re at the wall. Lance has nearly made it up to the lip by the third week. By then, he's managed a couple of storeys with Shiro belaying at the bottom and calling out any potential holds that look unforgiving.

 

 _It's not that bad. As long as I don't look down_ , Lance paws at a knobby root sticking out of the wall. It trembles in his hands and he clamours to switch to another hold. A replay of Pidge falling off the wall imprints itself into his brain and Lance shudders violently. He's about to peer down at the offending hold, but his brain screams at him. _Don't look down, Lance. Don't. Look. Down!_

 

He jerks back, swaying a bit in place before he continues climbing at snail pace, determined to make it halfway today because it would finally mean that he's made some progress. That is, until Shiro halts everything to call an end to the session.

 

"All right, that's looks like enough for today, good job Lance."

 

Lance clutches the hold with a tight grip, his knuckles going white. “Huh,” he says, mildly. “Shiro, I don’t think I should get back down now.”

 

“Hang on, I’ll come and get you.”

 

“ _Bless you_ —but, ah, nah, just let me see if I can reach the gap.”

 

Shiro gives him an assessing look (but Lance can't see him, he’s more concerned with focusing on his koala grip). He frowns, “It’s another fifteen feet above you. I think that’s enough for today.”

 

“I can do this!” says Lance with a stubborn growl.

 

“Lance, don’t be an ass." Shiro returns, not unkindly.

 

"No! Please, I need to get this done."

 

"Lance," Shiro sighs, and Lance just knows he's pinching the bridge of his nose in that exasperated manner of his whenever things get out of hand (even if Lance can't see behind him) "You've done eight relays already. I can guarantee you're going to feel this later."

 

Lance gnashes his teeth together, "We've barely been at it for half an hour."

 

"It's been two hours."

 

 _Oh_.

 

Lance feels guilty now. Shiro probably has a bunch of other stuff to do after this, not to mention he spent two hours pulling Lance’s weight as he scrambled up the wall.

 

“All right, I’m coming down,” he says, “just gimme a sec, I need to fix my foo— “

 

Lance makes the mistake of looking down for real this time.

 

“Ah,  _hell_.” he rasps.

 

Shiro looks tiny all the way down on the ground.  _Who da thunk?!_  Lance believes he’s somewhat hysterical because he’s so high, so very, very high. He concludes that he might be having a mini panic attack, his heart’s hammering against his ribcage.

 

He can hear Shiro yelling. But his voice sounds weird. Distant.  _Muffled_.

 

“—don’t let go of your hold!—“

 

The grounds getting closer. Lance idly wonders if he has a chance to activate his jetpack.

 

Everything goes white before he has a chance to work out if he does or not.

 

“Lance …  _Lance_.”

 

“ _Nngh_.”

 

“Are you okay? Anything bruised, broken? You feel like throwing up?”

 

Lance cracks open an eyelid to peer up at Shiro and bats his hands away, “Geez, you are such a helicopter parent.” he mumbles.

 

Shiro looks affronted, but there's a layer of relief somewhere beneath everything. He rolls his eyes.

 

"I mean it, I feel fine." Lance tries to reassure him, "Wobbly like Bambi perhaps, but for a twenty foot drop I admit I’m a bit surprised I'm not pancake batter. "

 

Shiro's face twists into a grimace at the analogy, "Lance.” he hisses once more, “But, you’re lucky," he continues with a sigh of relief. "The ropes held."

 

"Well, you were the one holding the ropes, thanks. So, it's all good, man. How long was I out for?"

 

"Not even a minute, I think. You didn’t do much, just flailed around the place a lot."

 

Lance hums. Then pauses, lips quirking into that shit-eating grin of his. "Magikarp." He breathes.

 

"Why, would you ever find that necessary to bring it up."

 

“I’m waiting to evolve into a Gyarados.”

 

“I am … going to ignore that.”

 

"Anyways, I, uh, well, this was eventful." says Lance. "I think I'm going to skip the next couple of days, though."

 

"Was going to  _maybe_  tell you to do the same."

 

Lance flashes him a weak smile, but it fades quickly. "Do you think I'm going ever going to get over this?" he says with a forlorn sigh.

 

Shiro lays a heavy hand on his shoulder, “You’ve already made leaps and bounds—taking the initiative was your first big step. It just takes time.” he says with a warm smile.

 

Shiro's words should have helped, but ... Lance still feels unbearably antsy. “Well, it’s not like I have much of that either.”

 

“You’re just being too hard on yourself.”

 

Lance’s fists clench behind his back. Everything that Shiro has said so far makes sense, and he wants to believe it so badly but it’s just not enough. He’s tired of being a liability. But Shiro’s right, he’s pushing himself too hard right now. Lance’s hands unclench.

 

“Yeah, I … must work on that,” he mumbles, turning towards the doors, “Good talk, boss-man. I’m going to turn in now.”

 

Shiro pats him once more on the back, Lance gives him another, bigger smile and leaves.

 

* * *

 

 

Lance can’t sleep.

 

This isn’t even close to the fitful, but half-way there nights he had been experiencing for the last couple of weeks. This is full blown insomnia.

 

He used to have nightmares with a recurring theme; of Veronica dropping from her hold—and him unable to do anything. The dreams, which hadn’t come to him in nearly two years, had started up once again after the first time Lance saw the climbing wall. But the details started changing. One night, it’s Hunk who falls off, Pidge the next, Allura, Coran, Shiro,  _Keith_  feature in the following days. They all tumble down and Lance wakes up, a second later sweaty, and disoriented. Screaming out to his teammates in his dreams but waking up with his arms wildly reaching out. Sometimes, It’s Lance himself who falls off with no one holding the rope and while the dreams still have him waking up in a panic, he’s less agitated because he stupidly reasons that it’s better him than one of them.

 

This is a weird night for him. Lance feels twitchy. Well, twitchier than usual. And he’s just so wide awake. He can’t make up his mind if he’s glad because he’s not getting sleep (and by extension not dealing with his shitty dreams) or if he’s upset because he’s not getting sleep (beauty sleep this time, although the faint eye bags settling under his eyes tell him that either way it’s not going to work)

 

He looks at the phosphorus arms of the clock on his wall—an item that nearly convinces him that Ikea might just be a secret intergalactic trading company because it’s literally a carbon copy of the one he has in him own room at home, although that one’s placed above a well worn SpaceX poster, and dotted with ugly reflective stickers. He’s certain that his clock was an Ikea original.

 

It’s a couple of hours past midnight. Space midnight. Whatever.

 

No one’s going to be wandering the Castle around at this time in the night. Lance decides to pay the kitchen an impromptu visit. He slips into his fuzzy lion slippers, pulls on his blue robe and the pads down to the fridge.

 

The lights are off, but there’s a faint ambient light somewhere above him brightening up the kitchen. A freshly washed bowl sits on the island with the goo dispensing hose. Lance reckons that maybe he was wrong—one of his teammates were definitely awake. somewhere in the last hour or at least had either left just before he had walked in. He peeks outside to see if he had any company. The corridor is empty.

 

Lance sighs and fills up his bowl with a bit of some mint flavoured goo that Hunk had recently figured out to make (although the initial plan was to get it to taste like chicken) and grabs a tetrapak from the cooler. He settles himself at the island to eat but ends spending another half hour uselessly contemplating his existence—all it does is sour his mood even further.

 

He polishes off his bowl, washes it and sets it down next to the previous bowl he had found. Then he takes the long way back to his room.

 

He passes the training deck on his way back. Lance breezes past it, but a second later, he turns around and stalks back to the doors. He stands in front of the metal doors for a few long minutes, weighing his options, then, he pushes in at last, and makes his way to stare up at the climbing rock with an antagonistic gleam in his eyes.

 

“Well, I’m not getting any sleep, I might as well do it, eh.” he mutters to himself. He shakes a fist at the offensive wall. He imagines he hears an amused snort, it sounds like Keith’s and Lance berates himself for thinking about unnecessary things at this time. He glances around him once more but there’s no one there—his nerves are frying his brain.

 

He leaves the training deck and makes his way to his room, treading slowly past the other paladins’ doors, and picks up his armour post haste and exits his room. Then he heads back, piecing it on as he moves.

 

Lance finishes snapping his gauntlets into place just as he crosses the heavy doors and moves to the foot of the wall.

 

“Now, lemme see,” he murmurs, looking around him for a lever or switch to pull. “How do I get that harness down?”

 

He starts tapping around the base, but doesn’t find anything. Feeling frustrated, he kicks the wall and has to stop himself from howling at the recoiling pain that shoots up his foot.

 

“Ow- _goddammit_!”

 

Lance leans against the wall, fingers rubbing his chin in mock contemplation and he hops around on one foot. Coran had done something to get them down—did he clap? Or was it something else? Lance scowls and berates himself for not paying more attention to Shiro when he helped him with the equipment.

He lines his hands above his head in an exaggerated manner, then he claps them together, the cracking reverberating through the air.

 

Nothing happens.

 

Huh. Lance claps again. He thinks he hears the soft  _zwipp_  the harness makes when it drops down the line, but the lights overhead, as dull as they are, fall right into his eyes, and Lance gives up trying to spot anything.

 

He waits for a couple of seconds and gives it a final shot, rapping smartly, but this time he sees the harness fall down and then fly back up.

 

Lance growls, the final vestiges of his patience gone with the wind only to be replaced with desperation, “Argh, forget this!” he sneers at the offending line above his head. Throwing all caution and common sense to the wind, he places a heavy foot on a stub and reaches for a hold above his head. If he regrets this later, so be it.

 

“The fuck,  _Lance_!”

 

Lance leaps off the wall like a frightened cat. He whirls around, eyes widening because he knows that voice.

 

“Keith, what are you doing here?” he says, tone guilty.

 

Keith stalks forward from the shadows and into the light like some goddamed fallen angel. His hair’s all mussed up and he’s wearing his usual black T-shirt, but on his feet are his own red lion slippers and his sleep pants are checkered and loose. He sees Lance eyeing his slippers and for a spilt second he looks embarrassed but he repositions himself, taking a baby step back into the shadows, and looks back with a challenging glint in his eyes that seems to dare Lance to ask him about it. It’s oddly arousing and Lance feels his cheeks go warm but he pretends he doesn’t know what’s causing them to.

 

“I’d ask you the same thing. I’m not the one trying to get a permanent pass to the healing pod.” says Keith calmly, or at least its a facsimile of calmness, the little vein pulsing in his neck was a dead giveaway. He’s  _livid_.

 

“I just wanted to get this done with, man. What’s gotten your mullet in a knot?”

 

Keith lets out a heavy sigh, some of the tension drawing out from his shoulders, and drags a gloved palm over his face. “Ugh,” he moans, “why don’t you ever, I dunno, just quit?”

 

“Are you talking about me, climbing up the wall,” says Lance with a sly smirk, “or me, pissing you off?”

 

“Both.”

 

“Ah.

 

“I bet you would’ve broken something, stupid. Shiro told me what happened today and, guess what, it actually hurts without the damn harness,  _genius_. I thought if you couldn’t get to it you’d go back to room and just—”

“ _Whoa_ , whoa, whoa. Hold the phone.” Lance interjects suddenly. “You were here all this time?”

 

“Oh, shit.” Keith looks like deer caught in the headlights. “I-”

 

“You could have helped me get the harness down! I clapped so many times just like Coran,” Lance grumbles on, ignoring Keith’s sputters while sharply bringing his hands together in a rapid staccato, “See? Nothing. The stupid thing’s refusing to work with me here—I bet you probably know how to—oh, goddammit _, ouch_!” something bounces off Lance’s head, he looks down at the ground and gasps when he sees the stupid harness on the ground, almost mocking him. “What the hell, dude. What. the. hell.”

 

Keith claps and the line shoots back up.

 

“Wait.  _What_?!” Lance yelps. “I finally get that thing down, and you just  _swoosh_  it away? Bring it back!”

 

Keith narrows his eyes at Lance. “There’s no way I’m letting you knock yourself out. Or worse.” he adds darkly. “Can’t you just wait for Shiro tomorrow? You’re getting too worked up over everything.”

 

Lance bristles, turning his back on Keith, and claps.

 

Keith claps at the same time.

 

The harness trembles, but stays up. Another light-bulb goes off in Lance’s head.

 

“Of course, you’ve been messing with the line the entire time you were here,” Lance says with a resigned sigh. “just leave me be, man.”

 

“You know that’s not happening,” Keith deadpans.

 

“ _Oh yeah_ , and who made you my Ma?” Lance folds his arms over his chest and his lips curls into a small sneer. He invades Keith’s space, leaning in contemptuously until their noses almost bump, and jabs a bony finger into Keith’s chest, “I’m going up, Keith, and it doesn’t matter whether you, or Shiro, or just about  _anyone_  else likes it or not.”

 

“For fuck’s sake,  _Lance_.” Keith jumps away from him like someone lit a cracker under his arse, face red and angry. He swipes at Lance’s hand. “You wanna go up? Alright.  _Fine_. But we’re doing it my way.”

 

“My way? What do you me— _guh_.” Lance grunts as Keith pulls him along with him, walking around the back of the wall. He latches on to this new train of thought almost immediately. “Oh, does this thing have better holds at the back? Like a beginner’s trail? ‘Cause, that would be cool—Oh wait, uh, Keith. buddy, pal,  _dude_ , those are steps. That... _totally_  defeats the purpose. “

 

“No one’s climbing anywhere.” says Keith cryptically, leading them up a couple of feet until they hit a landing.

 

“Eh?”

 

“Just—trust me on this one, okay?” he says, this time a touch more softly. He bumps a shoulder against Lance’s, but the the blue paladin has fallen silent. His brain is short circuiting, because of course, he’d take anything that Keith said as gospel. He could claim the sky was green or seawater was sweet and he’d go right along with whatever nonsense Keith came up with.

 

Keith leads the two of them right up to the base, where the rock kisses the landing. He starts running his hands along the vines, which seem to have grown in abundance, twice as thicker and in number than the vines growing in the front.

 

“It should be right—ah, here.”

Keith’s left hand disappears into a tangle of vines. Lance jumps to attention with a muffled shout, but he’s waved away. “Hang on,” Keith says, unperturbed. “I just need to—” He brings out his Marmoran blade from god knows where, and as it elongates into its sword form, Keith twists and pulls at the vines at the spot his hand had sunk into. He hacks right into the thick outcropping he’s pulled up, the vines fall away, leaving a gaping hole in the wall big enough to squeeze through.

 

He manages to place a foot through the hole, and one moment he’s standing in front of Lance, but the next, he’s disappeared into the growth. Lance peers into the hole after him. “Get in here,” says Keith from the other side, “It’s alright.”

 

Lance follows.

 

He tumbles into a small cavern, the ceiling barely a couple of inches higher than his head. He could easily bump his head against the top if he tried.  _Although, it’s just right for Keith’s height._

 

“I’m barely an inch shorter than you, asshole.”

 

 _Whoops_. He'd said that out loud it seemed.

 

Lance snickers, “Anyway, what  _is_  this place. How’d you even find it?” he says, rapping a knuckle against the wall.

 

Keith shuffles over to the corner of the room. A moment later, a pale blue light fills up the cavern with the light from the lantern orb in his his hand. The cavern is empty, just littered with a few sparse vines that twist and coil around the room and a bunch of scattered rock shrapnel that’s chipped and fallen over time.

 

“I found it the last time we trained.” Keith gives Lance a sidelong glance, “You hadn’t come down for training that day.”

 

“Yeah,” Lance finds his feet to be the most interesting thing in the room all of a sudden. “Er, about that, I’m sor—”

 

“Don’t be.” Keith interjects.

 

“Huh?”

 

“I—er, we get it, Lance.” he says. “No one’s going to pressure you. No one expects you to get over something as awful as that in just a few days.”

 

“But—”

 

“But  _nothing_ ,” Keith pushes on a bit more firmly, “I think I have a bit of an idea of what’s going on in that head of yours, Lance. We’re here for you. You aren’t holding us back. We’re going to get through with this, and then, you’re going to okay. Everything is going to be  _okay_. Even if it takes us a year, even longer—it doesn’t matter, and until then— we’ll cover for you.”

 

Lance doesn’t say anything, but he smiles warmly at Keith. He’s glad he has a team like this his—one with unwavering confidence in him. There’s no doubt the everything that Keith and Shiro have said to him today has helped him.

 

Lance can tell Keith’s doing his best to make him feel comfortable and it’s absolutely maddening because it makes him feel warm and tingly all over.

 

He's all too aware of the affect that the red paladin holds over him, the cyan light that radiates off the orb in Keith’s hand bathes the sides of his face in a pale, shallow light and he looks almost ethereal with dark blue shadows that dance enticingly over the rest of his face—all Lance wants to do is just stare at him. The grin Keith returns seems to light up on it’s own regardless of the orb. It would have been so _easy_ to just close the distance between them, but Lance forces himself to step away, because this is probably a dumb idea.

 

“I’m still not sure how to get over this,” he says instead, taking Keith’s words to heart, as he asks for more help.

 

“Oh, I have an idea.” says Keith, the soft look on his face is replaced with a mischievous smirk. Lance bites back a nervous chuckle.

 

He leads Lance to yet another hole in the wall. This time they encounter a winding tunnel that inclined upwards. It seemed cooler than the cavern they had just left. The walls feel damper and the vines are slimy to the touch. Lance does his best to keep his hands off the walls, regardless of how much harder it makes it to walk up.

 

“Geez, thing thing looks much smaller than it lets on,” says Lance after a few minutes of walking up. “I’ve no idea which direction we’re walking in anymore.”

 

Keith hums in affirmation, “It always feels a bit different every time I climb this. This rock’s weird.”

 

“Y'know.” Lance whispers in a conspirative voice. “Allura said that Coran had  _grown_  this thing. D’you think that maybe...”

 

“What?”

 

“...it’s alive and we’re roaming it’s innards as we speak, Keithy boy. We went _up the butt_.”

 

Keith’s stops in his tracks. He turns around with the most incredulous look Lance has ever seen on his face. “Where the  _fuck_ do you even get these ideas from?”

 

“I heard it rumble! It’s alive!”

 

“Well, something must have echoed in that damned split!”

 

“ _Obviously._ But  _what_?”

 

“Oh my god, Lance.” Keith groans, “This thing’s just a giant-ass  _rock_. I bet it’s just like one of those magic capsules you get at Walmart where you dump a bucket of water on your thing and it grows into a turtle the size of your empty head.”

 

“I can totally see Coran running around with a hose and a pebble,” Lance says with a grin, “and FYI, I take full offence at that quip.”

 

“That was the plan.”

 

“I hope you never actually thought the capsules were actual magic, Mullet Man. Because I’d hate to be the bearer of bad news.”

 

“I hate you.”

 

“Love you too, bruv.”

 

Keith shoves against Lance and lets out a little bark of a laugh. They make the rest of their way up in companiable silence peppered with a few quips here and there.

 

“Ah, er. Where are we?” says Lance eventually.

 

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel and Lance grins when he sees it. His legs ache from the walk, the strong incline made his thighs burn in protest and his ankles quiver.

 

“At the top,” says Keith. He stops and turns around to give Lance a searching look. “Alright, listen carefully. This is a bit like exposure therapy, we aren’t doing anything much today. Just sitting. At the top. Trying not to die. So, don’t go peeking over the edge or do something just as stupid.”

 

Lance gulps, but then shakes his head in resolve. “Yeah, this is going to be like being all the way up in a pent house.” he says. “I just gotta pretend I have a martini in one hand and a wad of cash in the other.”

 

Keith quirks an eyebrow at him. “Er, sure. Whatever floats your boat.” He steps through the entrance and reaches out for Lance’s hand and pulls him through. “We’re nearly a hundred and fifteen feet above the deck.”

 

Lance stands beside him, surveying the extensive landing around the them. “It’s a bit...anti-climatic.” he says after a few moments.

 

“Hm?”

 

“I still feel like I’m on the floor,” Lance explains. “This deck’s massive, I can barely make out the edge.”

 

Keith looks pensive, “Well, we’ve nothing else to do after this. Not today at least. But at least we’ve figured out that the notion of being so high up doesn’t bother you.”

 

“It the same when I fly Blue.” says Lance. “Like, when I fly her—I  _know_  that we’re nowhere near the floor, but I still feel safe. I think my problem stems from actual climbing.”

 

“So,” Keith says, drawing out the word. “Orophobia?”

 

Lance runs through a list of greek words he’s picked up from studying Greek Mythology back in school. “Mountain phobia?” he asks dubiously.

 

“Sort of. I mean you only panic when you start climbing—we don’t need to label it.”

 

“Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. That makes sense.” he sits down on a thick vine that stretches across the flat. “So do we go back, now?” He doesn’t really want to, sitting next to Keith is nice,  _really_  nice—he feels kinda safe and warm— and he’s still not sure if he’s going to get any sleep either way.

 

Keith hesitates, but gets up. “Wait here a tick.” he says. He disappears back into the tunnel and for a few short moments, Lance loses sight of him. When he comes back, it’s with a bulky parcel wrapped in a tarp nestled gently in his arms.

 

Keith unravels the tarp and pulls out a large box and a couple of pillows. He gestures at Lance to grab a pillow before fluffing up the other for himself, then he presses a button on the box before settling down next to Lance.

 

As it whirrs to life, Keith mumbles, “Couldn’t get sleep? Is that why you ended up wandering all over the Castle?”

 

“Something like that.” Lance replies, just as softly. “Just wanted a snack.”

 

“Bullshit.”

 

Lance is about to retort back when the metallic ceiling above them is replaced all of a sudden with a starry sky. Lance gasps, whatever he’s about to say forgotten as he takes in the view.

 

“ _Whoa_.” he says instead.

 

“Hunk and Pidge set it up. A reward system apparently. Make it up the wall and you get to spend some time with the stars.”

 

“And yet Pidge doesn’t care for sunsets.”

 

Keith huffs a laugh at that. “She has her moments.”

 

“ _Dude_!” Lance nudges Keith suddenly and points a quivering finger at a constellation. “That’s Orion! They set up our star system, oooh, bless those big brains of theirs. And look, there’s Gemini.” He points out Castor and Pollux and sinks back into his pillow, a wistful smile stuck on his face. He hears Keith make a soft noise under his breath and turns to face him.

 

Keith's ears are unusually pink, but his gaze is stuck somewhere on Bellatrix.

 

“Don’t you just miss it all sometimes, Keith?” he says out of the blue, eyes roving intently across Keith’s face. The other boy had already turned towards him. Keith starts and looks away.

 

“Er,” he fumbles, eyes downcast. “Not really. At least, it’s not like you probably do.”

 

“Why?” says Lance simply, eyebrows furrowing. This was new to him.

 

“I have nothing I care about in particular back on Earth.” Keith replies, looking a bit defensive as he speaks. “Since I have no family, I guess my next closest person was Shiro. He and the Garrison were my only constants at one point. But once Shiro disappeared,” Keith pauses, twisting a corner of his pillow violently, “I sort of lost him and my ties to the Garrison which was just about all I gave a shit about—and I didn’t even really care about the Garrison, if I was being honest.”

 

Lance squeezes Keith’s shoulder tightly, eyes bright and understanding. “Hey man,” he says. “I get it. But on the bright side, You got Shiro back and Garrison doesn’t matter like you said so you’re good,” another warm squeeze and then, “And you have a family now as well. Just remember that, you’re not alone anymore.”

 

“Thanks.” says Keith with a soft smile, and he means it. But their discussion abruptly ends there, because neither knows how to proceed. They ease into something a bit more relaxed.

 

Lance worries that he probably brought up a sensitive topic for Keith to talk about, but the other boy’s face is unwrinkled as he looks up at the sky, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. Lance lets out a relieved exhale at the scene.

 

They spend some more time pointing out the stars and make up new constellations to pass the time. Lance points at a group of stars that seem to form a pillar, he quickly baptises it Phallcyon, which prompts Keith to burst into a fit of giggles and Lance gives him hell for that, poking and prodding him to wring out a few more giggly outbursts. They fall asleep together just before the alarms go off without any warning and make them scramble.

 

* * *

 

The drill that Allura set up for everyone involved a mini squadron of rogue drones and bots that had split up to take out each paladin at their rooms.

 

The alarms had gone off at six-thirty, mouthing off the targeted areas in loud droning tones. Keith and Lance had gotten through the drill easily—they had teamed up—Lance was ready with his bayard and Keith had his Marmoran blade, paranoia had lead him to carry it with him continuously. The ran back down the tunnel and towards their sleeping quarters to take out the first wave of drones from the outside (because they had never been inside in the first place) before visiting Keith’s room first to pick up his bayard and suit and then heading off to Lance’s room to clear out the remaining pests.

 

The two had move in tandem, back to back, ducking and weaving, slashing and shooting. Keith dances ahead of Lance and lops off stray arms and legs, while Lance picks off bots with his rifle that come in too close for Keith to comfortably dispose off. They regroup, backs pushing together and holding firm until the next wave hits. It exhilarating and they finish off quickly; within two minutes they’ve knocked off ten bots.

 

As they rounded the corridor to the Castle bridge Keith stops Lance. “Lance,” he says waiting for the taller boy to run around. “I don’t think we should tell the others about yesterday.” he continues in hushed tones when Lance looks at him with an enquiring brow. Keith briefs a glance over his shoulder to see if Allura or Coran were heading their way, he doesn’t want anyone overhearing them.

 

“Same,” Lance lies with an uneasy grin, his heart falling to his stomach. It’s not that he intended to announce it to everyone on the castle-ship, but he could not see any reason behind Keith’s apprehension. Did he not want anyone knowing that they were hanging out? “They’d just flip their tables. It’s not like we did anything either-way, but I  _did_  cheat the system.”

 

“And uh, maybe also because we could continue this.” says Keith, his nose scrunches up in defiance. “It's just that I’m pretty sure the others might ... question our methods?”

 

Lance looks at him curiously, he ignores the urge to smoothen out Keith’s face.  _Well, this got just a bit more confusing,_  “You have something else up your sleeve?” he asks, ignoring the little trill of excitement fluttering around in his chest at Keith’s proposition.

 

“Something like that. But you have to continue working with Shiro, I think that’s helped as well.”

 

“Of course.”

 

They enter the deck, and heckle Allura and Coran for waking them up at such an ungodly hour.

 

Shiro, Hunk and PIdge traipse in a few minutes later, Pidge’s half asleep but her game face is still set into place, albeit a bit more crookedly than usual and Hunk’s bayard is still up. He’s still vigilant and not ready to trust that the drill was over. Allura exchanges times with the paladins, congratulating them on their improved scores. “Keith and Lance had excellent times today!” she says with a beaming smile. “I’m impressed with how quickly you two suited up and got to the deck, we should pull out the footage later and review your course.”

 

Two panicked faces whip around to look at her. No!” Keith yells. Allura quirks a puzzled brow at him. “That’s not a good- _oof_.”

 

“Uh, we’ll look at it soon, Princess.” Lance cuts in. Keith rubs his side and glares balefully at Lance, but Lance pointedly ignores him and is visibly squirming under Allura’s polite but strained gaze. “Keith’s just mad because I tripped him on my way here—it was an accident, of course—and doesn’t want anyone seeing that.  _Hehehehehe_.” he rambles and flashes a crazed smile at Keith. Keith catches on and returns the blow. However, he can't for the life of him figure out what Lance’s end game is.

 

“Yeah, uh. I fell on my ... face.” he says lamely. “Please don’t watch it.”

 

“I’ll take that into consideration.” Allura replies, face stoic and eyebrows quirked. “Are you sure you two are okay?”

 

Behind them Lance can hear Hunk and Pidge tittering, they chorus a quick  _yes ma’am_  and step back. Keith’s actively trying to blend into the shadows.

 

Allura spares them another quizzical glance before she turns back to the screen in her hand. “Shiro, I have a few more strategies for-” her voice fades away as she walks up to the Black Paladin and leaves the others to their own devices.

 

"If you insisted any further, she would have gotten those tapes out right away!" Lance says through the corner of his mouth.

 

Pidge sidles up to Keith’s side just as Hunk pulls Lance away to tell him about a theory about a super weapon for the Blue Lion. “So, you two definitely are hiding something” she says with a smug grin.

 

“Are not” comes the childish reply.

 

“Are  _too_!” Pidge sings. “You’d usually never let Lance get away with nonsense like that. I  _know_  there’s something fishy going on.”

 

“Well, you have a point, I wanted to pummel him for a second.”

 

“Hah _,_ so, you do admit it then!” round glasses glint knowingly at Keith and he turns away, he can feel the tips of his ears growing warm.

 

“No.” he growls.

 

On the other side of the bridge Hunk pulls out a tablet from one of his saddle pockets. “So, I was just messing around while Allura was recapping and found something really interesting.” he says with a sly smile, prompting Lance to move in closer. The screen changes to a video.

 

Lance recognises the setting and he jumps to try and pry the tablet away from Hunk’s iron grip. “Wait, Hunk,” he says in a panicked whisper, scrabbling at Hunk’s hands to no effect. “These aren’t Blue’s schematics.”

 

“Obviously.” comes the amused reply.

 

Lance looks at the feed of him and Keith curled up next to each other and looks back at Hunk in trepidation. He notes the way Keith springs up the second the alarm blares, it looks a bit odd because everything has been sped up exponentially. The feed switches cameras as the video plays out, following the two of them as they make their way to the tunnel, going static because there wasn't any surveillance  _inside_ said tunnels, and then back to the rooms. “Whoa, you guys work surprisingly well,” says Hunk smugly, whistling as the last bot drops. He waggles his thick eyebrows at Lance. “How did date night go?”

 

“It wasn’t a date!” says Lance hotly. “It was practice!”

 

“Sure thing.” says Hunk lightly. “Geez, I can’t believe Keith showed you the shortcut. He totally broke the code.”

 

“What code? Also, I’ll have you know that slope takes an age to climb up, it’s no walk in the park.” Lance crosses his arms over his chest in a huff.

 

“Only finishers get to see 'Cosmic Isle," says Hunk as he curls his first two fingers into quotation marks, "I still have no idea what the final projection looks like because I always get tired three quarters through.”

 

“That blows, dude. But you'll get it eventually!  _Anyhoo_ , you did call call me here for Blue’s stuff-”

 

Hunk frowns at his screen as he replays the footage of Lance and Keith tearing through the hole out the back of the wall. he sounds a bit distracted as he tries to get back to his point. “Oh ho, don’t think I haven’t caught on to you, because I don’t even have to look at you to see you’re trying to get out of talking to me.” he snarks. “Blue was just a ruse to get you here and you know it.” He tears his eyes away from his screen to give Lance a blank stare. “Why don’t you want anyone knowing that you two are practising together?”

 

Lance looks downcast, “You guys did veto Keith’s vote. Besides,  _he_  wanted to keep this mum, not me. That, back over there, was just me stalling for him because he nearly blew our cover singlehandedly.” he sighs deeply.

 

“I was just worried you’d jump off the wall yourself every time you thought Keith did something remotely impressive.” says Hunk nonchalantly, scrubbing through the video for third time. “Which, to you, happens to be all the time and I didn’t want a corpse for a best friend. But I guess I was wrong.”

 

Lance glares at him, “Would you stop?” he hisses, “I acknowledged Keith’s physical prowess once and you’ve turned me into some sort of enterally parched man.”

 

“Well, Lance,” begins Hunk, “do you remember the Garrion mixer we had first semester?” Lance gives him a blank stare and Hunk just rolls his eyes. “Ugh, course you don’t. You managed to get your self plastered off bootleg rummy punch within the first half-hour and then went off sulking like a child, and I couldn’t figure  _why_ —until I realised the corner you were in kept Keith in your sight the entire night.” He smirks at the red painting Lance’s ears, “He wasn’t even doing anything—Keith was being just as surly as you in his own little corner of death and darkness, although it’s honestly just a norm with that dude.”

 

Lance scowls at his best friend. “I did no such thing,” he protests. “and that’s barely incriminating, how’d you even know I was  _staring_  at whatshisname, huh?”

 

“I have eyes, Lance,” Hunk retorts. “And you literally started spilling the tea on that poor boy. Eventually, you forgot you were pretending to hate him and started making it very obvious you had something very different in mind. At one point you begged a god you didn’t believe in to get Keith to—and I’m quoting you ad verbatim on this— ‘choke me with those  _finnneee_  thighs.’ _Quiznak_ , I feel like I’m violating Keith just by repeating that,” he finishes with a blush.

 

“Oh. _S_ _hit_ ,” Lance says, eyes wide as a blush threatens to take over his face. “I thought that was all in my head.”

 

“No, you were pretty much vocal the entire time,” Hunk says flippantly. “I have more quotes if you need any. No? Well, your loss then. But anyway, I rest my case—you’ve been a thirty-ass  _ham_  for him ever since we started as ickle rookies at the Garrison and don’t you _dare_ deny it.”

 

Lance growls and opens his mouth to tell Hunk off but the yellow paladin shushes him, distracted, and tugs him closer, pointing at the screen. “ _Dude_ , I knew something was off about this video.”

 

Lance cocks his head at Hunk and waits for him to continue. He wants to stir the pot and snark back, but Hunk’s refusing to pay any attention to him right now. He’s learnt how to deal with his friend’s bullshit.

 

There’s a spark lit in Hunk’s eyes that could only mean that he had made a breakthrough on whatever project he was currently working on. Although, Lance had no idea what was happening. “How long would you say it takes to walk through that back passage?” says Hunk.

 

Lance pauses to think and says “Tens minutes, tops. I think?”

 

“And normally you’d probably lose a minute or two max if you were running back down right? It would go by faster but not by too much.” Lance nods back in confirmation.

 

“Well then, you two made it out in under a minute.”

 

Lance stares at him, dumbfounded. “That’s ridiculous.”

 

“Watch it for yourself.” he pushes his tablet over to Lance and replays the clip. It is not a lot to go on, the feed starts at the landing — he watches them start and hustle into action before disappear down the hole once more, but in just under a minute the camera switches to them crawling out at the bottom.

 

“I’m looking at this, but it makes zero sense.” Lance shakes his head in disbelief. “It could be a recording error.”

 

“Perhaps, but it doesn’t explain how you two made it out to the bridge so quickly if it would have taken you more than five minutes to get down from the wall when the entire drill barely lasted fifteen."

 

“I was telling Keith about this theory I had about the rock being sentient. Maybe it adjusted the tunnel for us.”

 

Hunk hums thoughtfully, “It is a possibility, but Lance, come on. It’s a rock. Also;  _why_?”

 

“The  _vines_  do a lot for something that’s not sentient.” Lance gripes.

 

Hunk sends him a quelling stare. “The vines are’t an internal component of the rock even if they do grow on it.”

 

“Allura said that Coran  _grew_  the rock, isn’t that enough to prove its sentience?”

 

“I bet he grew it like a magic capsule.”

 

Lance stares at Hunk, jaws agape, “I don’t believe this,” he mutter, shaking his head in disbelief. “The universe is out to get me.”

 

Hunk mutters a silent “ _what_?” just as Pidge comes running up to them with Keith in tow, cutting off the conversation.

 

“Keith’s an asshole,” she announces. “just thought I’d let you all know.”

 

“What did he do this time?” says Lance unwittingly.

 

Pidge smirks at him, “Oh, he won’t tell me. But I know it has something to do with  _you_.”

 

Lance groans and scrubs at his face. He turns to Keith and says. “Hunk already knows. Might as well just get this over with.”

 

The light reflects off Pidge’s glasses as she gives Keith a smug grin. She looks like the cat that got the cream. “Oh-hohoho _ho_ , is this what I think this is?” she says. “Keith, did you finally ask-”

 

“Shut it.” he cuts her off quickly with a glare. He rounds up on Lance. “I thought we were keeping this between ourselves.” he says, eyebrows slanting angrily into each other.

 

“Careful now, or your face will get stuck like that.” Lance says, trying to muster up the most charming grin he has in his arsenal all while inching away from the irate boy in front of him. It doesn’t help, Keith simply matches him step for step, frown deepening, until Lance’s back bumps into Hunk. He lets out a nervous chuckle, hands reaching behind him to prod at Hunk’s face. “Hunk!” he whisper screams, glancing back at Allura, Shiro and Coran still deep in conversation. “Hunk  _somehow_  saw the feed already. I didn’t say anything!”

 

Hunk frowns and pulls away the hand tugging at his nose. “Yeah, dude. This one’s all on me.” he turns to Keith with a guilty smile. “I was messing with the mech system and thought the live feeds would help me with further VR simulations.”

 

Pidge hd beena watching the scene unfold before her, feet tapping erratically until she couldn’t hold it back in any longer. “Alright,” she says, her face turning red. “Is anyone going to tell me just what the  _fuck_  going on?”

 

Hunk and Lance look at Keith. He stares back, the three of them locked in some sort of oddball, non-verbal argument. He finally looks away. “Ugh,” he says, hanging his head. “Fine.”

 

Hunk silently hands over the tablet to Pidge. She plays the sped-up video and watches it from end to end. “Dude, you went all Angsty McBitchboi on me because you didn’t want anyone to see you two cuddling?” she says to Keith, nose wrinkling slightly. “Are you for real?”

 

“We weren’t cuddling!” Lance and Keith deny at the same time. They both avert their gazes, refusing to look at each other. Lance scuffs his heel against the floor missing the coy, secret smile that Hunk and Pidge exchange.

 

“What I mean is,” Keith tries to explain. “we were trying to tackle the wall.”

 

Pidge narrows her eyes at the two in front of her. “Okay, alright,  _geez_. But even after everyone agreed that this might just end up in flames?” her face splits into a sly grin, “It’s not like I believed even for a second that you were going to listen to us anyway.”

 

Keith looks at Pidge wearily. “I can also help scrub the video from the files.” she adds, “At a price, however.”

 

“Perfect, name it and we’ll get done,” Lance cuts in. “Maybe then Keith will stop looking like he’s going to start a riot.”

 

Keith grimaces, but all Lance does is quirk an eyebrow at him. “You do realise you’re making a deal with the devil?” he says.

 

Pidge scoffs “Whatever,” she says, tone mild. “I’ll cash in my favour later. I don’t need anything from you two dorks right now.” Hunk’s behind her, miming his head getting sliced off.  _This is all on you_ , he mouths, with a wicked smile on his face. Lance gulps.

 

“What’s going on here?” says Shiro as he and Allura sidle up to the group.

 

There’s a pause before anyone says anything. “Keith and Lance were grumbling about your practices, Princess.” Pidge offers after no one says anything for a beat too long.

 

She’s covering for them, but she’s doing a terrible job of it. And boy, did she know it, if the rude gesture she makes with the hand behind her back is anything to go by.

 

“I guess I should tell you two to expect more drills, then.” Allura scowls at them, but the smile hiding behind it is hard to ignore. “but everyone’s off for today, you all did good work.”

 

The paladins cheer up considerably, any misgivings at being woken up early forgotten as they were now free to go straight back to their beds. Pidge stretches out and stifles a yawn. “You’re going straight back in for a nap.” says Shiro at once. She protests with a weak “ _but daaad_ ”, which earns her a few chuckles from everyone else, but ends up letting Shiro nudge her out of the room.

 

Coran wanders through, twirling his moustache as he speaks, “Hunk, my boy. I’m feeling like eating something fancy for dinner today. Would you like to help me set up?”

 

“Aw, hell yeah.” cheers Hunk, pumping a fist through the air. “Gourmet space tacos!” He exists stage left soon after.

 

Lance decides to head back to his room. After seeing Pidge yawn, Lance is inspired. He’s just waiting to hit the sack, because even though Keith had helped him catch a few winks, he can feel his body protesting because it was just one day that he has caught up on after a jittery two weeks. He bids adieu to Shiro, Allura and Keith and steps off the bridge.

 

He reaches the corridors leading to the dormitories when hears fast paced footsteps following behind him. “Wait, Lance!”

 

“Ah, Keith.” says Lance, without turning around. “This is starting to turn into a habit.”

 

He can almost hear Keith's eyes roll. He turns around in time to see the dregs of a fond smile slip into something more neutral and wishes he had turned around faster.

 

He nearly misses what Keith says next because he’s too busy letting his brains turn to mush, “Come to the next group climbing practice?” sounds like a joke and he decides that he must have misheard Keith. Lance asks him to repeat himself once more.

 

Keith does so and this time, Lance hears the hesitant twist to his statement. Keith elaborates when his face takes on a slightly panicked expression, “Relax,” he says laying a comforting hand on his shoulder, “I’m not telling you to climb or anything. I think just watching someone else go up might help you let go of a few of your, er, reservations? More indirect exposure and whatnot.”

 

Lance pauses but then nods shyly. The next day, when the drills start up again, Lance walks in to stand with his team.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rate and review please! I'd love to hear from y'all.
> 
> Ooh, I'm also looking for a beta reader!


	2. Levelling Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Punk are master meddlers and the boys are soft but still so, _so, ridiculously dumb._
> 
> Also, shit kinda hits the fan.

The next evening finds Lance lounging at the back with Allura, watching Hunk and Pidge as they check their harnesses. Hunk’s psyching himself up—slapping his cheeks and doing a quick, little jog in place—because It's a long way to the top.

 

Lance, on the other hand, isn't even going up, but the familiar unease has already crawled into his bones and stared nesting.

 

They're doing tag races today, Shiro’s with Hunk and Keith’s paired up with Pidge. Coran draws a line across the room some fifty meters away from the wall in chalk and waits for both teams to assemble on the other side with a whistle in hand. “All right, champs!” he says boisterously—Hunk flinches a bit his cheerfulness— there’s a distinct correlation between the tenor of his voice and the severity of the situation that the paladins are thrust into.

 

This is probably going to be a tough day.

 

“I want the belayers to pull up to half course! Get those harnesses to the lip!”

 

“What’s he going on about?” Lance asks Allura in confusion. “Don’t they need their gear?”

 

“Not for the first half of the climb,” says Allura, “at least, not anymore. We’re trying to start relying on the safety of the jet packs—if this was a real-case scenario, we’re not going to be fortunate enough to find a cliff face with a harness pulley already attached to its top.” she rolls her eyes and gestures to the gap that lies near the centre, “And this is ...  _relatively_ safe. A fall from that height could be easily cushioned with the packs but as you go higher, the energy bursts become too short to sustain a comfortable landing. Personally, I’d say that it’s doable, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” A small frown mars her face before she says, “Of course, there shouldn’t ever be a reason where you’d have to depend solely on your survival with your pack. All of you should be able to cling on and not slip off.”

 

Lance looks up the wall once more. “That sounds terrifying.” he gulps.

 

“It’s necessary.”

 

“...yeah, sure. Okay.”

 

Coran blows his whistle in a series of short blasts. “Are you ready?” he asks, and starts a countdown when both teams nod at him. “ _Go!”_

 

Pidge and Hunk make a beeline for the wall, the proverbial dust bellowing behind them. It’s obvious that Pidge is a natural at climbing. She finds holds without any preamble, scurrying over the cliff face faster than a mountain goat. Her stance is confident and resilient. Hunk, on the other hand, tends to sway as he climbs, his grip is a lot more clumsier, but what he lacks in finesse, he makes up in pure, unadulterated power. Lance is in awe at the way his strong arms power him to the top—for every two holds Pidge grabs onto, Hunk covers the same distance in one long heave. He swings upwards, with an uncommon, competitive glint in his eyes. The two exchange battle cries all the way up.

 

They seem evenly matched up till the half-way point. It is only when they reach the lip does Hunk end up falling back because his harness dangles a foot away from his reach. Keith’s trying to adjust the distance but by the time Hunk manages to gear up and get out of the cavern, Pidge has put some hefty mileage between them. He jumps upward to grab on to the ledge and clamber past the lip, but his hands are shaky and he misses the hold, dropping a few feet before shooting back up with his pack.

 

Lance is gnawing anxiously on a knuckle. eyes wide and wavering like crazy. It’s was the most he could do to suppress the yell that nearly tears past his lips. The distance grows between him and Pidge, and Lance remembers Hunk’s retelling of his last climb. It’s obvious that the yellow paladin is slowly losing his juice. He’s still powering on, but the yells grow far and few in between and his pace starts to slows down.

 

Pidge rappels down with a triumphant yell once she reaches the top and, presumably, smacks a bell—it’s hard to see from all the down at the bottom—its clanging  _ding_ reverberating around the room. Hunk drops a few seconds after her and barrels towards Keith.

 

As Hunk nears Keith, he holds his arm out, mirroring the stance Keith’s already set himself up in. Their palms slap against each other and Keith’s off like a bow let loose from an arrow with a determined smirk in place as he charges to gain back the space now between him and Shiro.

 

Shiro and Keith seem to be indulging in a bout of rambunctious banter, it’s with a lot of huffing and puffing from either end, but their voices float down to the others. Lance grins when he hears Keith calls out tauntingly, “Put a leg to it, old man, I’m about to catch up to you.”

 

“Yeah, that’ll be right after I cross the finish line.” Shiro retorts. “By the time you reach down, this Shirogane’s going to be Shiro _gone._

 

Pidge and Lance drop a long  _Ooooh snap!_ and everyone knows that if Keith had the time, he’d stop just long enough to flip everyone off. It does seem to incite him further, however, if the exponential increase in his speed is anything to go by.

 

They get closer to lip, Keith’s quickly catching up. He’s much lighter than Shiro and uses that to his advantage, pulling himself up with reckless abandon and whipping past holds at breakneck pace. Lance’s hair stands up on end, Keith’s levels of daredevilry have kind of gone past his usual quota. Lance personally thinks it’s borderline stupidity, but he decides that his nerves might have rendered him a bit biased. Still, Keith holds himself firm, his grip never wavering and he’s as steady as a mountain goat.

 

Lance sternly reminds himself to calm down and focus on the fancy footwork going on above him.

 

Hunk looks back at Lance, still not needed until Keith actually sticks the half-landing. He notices Lance watching Keith intently, mistaking his concern for, well, something else entirely. His lips pull back into a cheshire grin. “Hey, Lance,” he calls. “C’mere for a sec.”

 

Before Lance reaches him, Hunk tries to mask his smirk into a somewhat distressed face. “What’s up, doc?” says Lance. He falls for it, hook, line and sinker. “God, you look terrible, Hunk. Is everything all right?”

 

Hunk supposes the slightly feral look he’s currently sporting as his lips war between a frown and a toothy might be a bit of an overkill. He tones it down, mentally squashing any traces of amusement on his face and deepens the furrow between his brows.

 

“I think I might have messed up.” he says with a nervous hitch.

 

“What happened?l” Lance asks.

 

“Oh, uh, it’s the kitchens. I was trying to re-bake those jello biscuits that we ended up using for the teludav and I think I left them in for too long.” Hunk ups the ante and gives Lance a wide-eyed look. “I screwed up the last six batches, and I don’t have enough diluted scaultrite for one more.”  
  
Lance pulls away with an easy grin on his face. “Hakuna your tatas, man. I’ll go switch it off—”

 

“No!” Hunk whisper screams, “I-I mean, It’s a  _process_! They might fall in if you take them out the wrong way or, ugh, turn into glass like the first time I tried it—I took them out because I thought a one degree margin of error wouldn’t make much of a difference, and that was such a  _stupid_ move,  _or_  they might char if you don’t let them sit for an appropriate amount of time  _or_ -”

 

“Whoa, whoa, easy there now.” Lance rushes. “If you don’t want me to go up, then, what’s the plan? I could get Coran to go—maybe Allura-”

 

“No, no. That’s not the point!  _I_ gotta go  _now._ Um, if you could …”

 

Lance cocks his head, “Huh?” he says dumbly. Hunk’s unstrapped the band band from around his waist, and it now lies in Lance’s hands. He realises what’s going on a second too late. “Wait! Hunk— _no!”_

 

It’s too late, Hunk’s floored it. “ _Enjoy the view,”_ he yells as he makes his hasty exit, leaving Lance very confused and jittery.

 

Lance looks at Allura, his gaze desperate and so, so anxious. But, he doesn’t have time to call out to her, the rope in his hands jerks wildly and that’s when he sees Keith grab hold of his end of the rope and hop into the harness. Keith doesn’t even spare his teammates on the ground a glance—he hops right to it, almost done with his goal to lead his team to certain victory.

 

Lance has no choice. He straps to the guard, and prays that Keith doesn’t lose his grip today of all days. He doesn’t need to do much, he realises. Unlike Pidge from the first day or from his own experiences with Shiro belaying. Keith doesn’t lean back into the slack even once—and Lance is impressed. If he was being honest with himself, and he’s trying not let himself get distracted—it’s not like he expected Keith to be any less than the best, the boy was all instinct and pure, lean machine power. Lance feels that he could wax poetry about the boy squirreling it up above him in way that would make his tenth year English professor proud. He feels his cheeks grow warm.

 

And that’s when he sees it. Like,  _really sees it._ He finally gets what Hunk’s coy little comment meant.

 

_Enjoy the view._

 

Boy, is he embarrassed. Keith’s powerful, all right. The black spandex under his paladin suit does nothing to hide that fact. Lance can’t find the logic behind the weird gaps in the metal armour they’re forced to wear; they’re too big. It’s the first time he’s thought about this—their armour does nothing to protect one’s arse,  _literally._ Instead, it frames it like a goddamned little picture frame.

 

 _Gods, what am I thinking?_ Lance mentally slaps himself and looks away quickly. He feels super guilty, checking out Keith—something he’s sure he’s not supposed to do while he’s still holding onto a rope that’s his teammate’s first line of defence should he fall—and definitely not when he, said belayer, is also  _scared out of his goddamned mind_.

 

He notes that arousal, guilt and fear make for a strange combination.

 

Lance’s eyes are drawn to Keith once more against his will. He’s weak. This time he hones into whatever he can see of his thighs that peek out a bit before disappearing behind the white of his armour. They’re strong and sinewy, and with every launch off a hold, every strained pull upwards, they ripple and move like a well oiled machine. If Lance died right now, he probably wouldn’t regret anything.

 

Oh all right, maybe that’s not a hundred percent true, but at least he’d die happily distracted.

 

By the time his momentary lapse in concentration rides out, Keith’s at the top. Shiro’s already struck the bell, but Keith’s now just a hair’s breadth behind him. He too, strikes the ringer and then glances down below him.

 

Another one of his crazy grins creep across his face. Lance stops breathing.

 

And then he  _drops._

 

He doesn’t rappel down like Shiro. Doesn’t stop even once. He goes down like a two ton anchor dropped out of a dinghy, yelling triumphantly as he shoots past Shiro, who in turn shakes his head in exasperation at the wild demon speeding by him. He doesn’t look all that concerned. No one seems to be worried. He’s pulled this stunt before.

 

But, it’s the first time  _Lance_ has seen it.

 

He doesn't scream like the last time. He doesn’t process what’s going on in front of him either. His heart’s stuck somewhere up his throat and his mind’s gone blank. Everything that he was feeling just moments ago is completely forgotten—instead his hands clamp around the rope that’s slipping past him in a death-like vice, but Keith’s momentum carries him onwards with imperceptible resistance.

 

Lance hadn’t expected to play an active role in today’s training exercise,  _ergo_ , he is the only one not in armour—which also means he’s not wearing the protective gloves that come with the undersuit. The rope hisses in his hands; he’s vaguely aware of a stinging pain and the smell of charred skin.

 

Keith activates his jetpack just moments before he lands, dropping softly into a tuck and roll and then leaps up, making his way back to the border-line. Shiro’s left behind to eat dust.  Pidge groans because Keith’s going to be unbearably smug for the rest the of the day. He turns around to give Hunk a congratulatory smile, but it drops into a confused grin when he sees Lance in his place, looking shell-shocked and faint.

 

“Lance?” he says, voice unsure, smile slipping off completely. “What are you doing with the rope? Where’s Hunk?” The others have also caught onto the switch and are looking on with confused glances. Keith looks like he’s trying to approach a traumatised child. It snaps Lance out of the stupor he was in, and he shakes his head quickly before tearing up to Keith, hands still shaking but with a vicious scowl marring his face, the flip in demeanour throwing Keith off guard and forcing him to take a tentative step backwards. He grabs Keith by the shoulders, hand sheavy, and fingers digging in just a touch too tight.

 

“What,  _the fuck,_  was that there just now.” he rasps, teeth bared back in what could be a mixture of surging anger and … protectiveness? Not even Lance knew exactly what he was feeling, but whatever is was, it was  _overwhelming._  “One wrong move and you would’ve have been nothing but a bloody  _pulp_  on the damn floor!”

 

For a second it seems that Keith’s temper has caught up to him. He flinches and opens his mouth to fire back, but then he sees a streak of red on his suit that’s not a colour-coded accent, instead it is thick and viscous  _blood_  and he finally notices Lance’s clawed grip dripping hotly down his own shoulder. His anger bleeds away and is replaced by mortification. “W-what,” he stammers, slowly prying the hands off his shoulders and cradling them gently “What happened to you?”

 

Lance’s hands are a mess. They’re bloody and charred where the rope cut in as it whizzed past. The shock wears off and he hisses in pain. The others run up to them at the noise—previously keeping their distance after seeing Lance’s face and not knowing what to do with the inevitable altercation—the blood changes their course. Pidge goes a bit green when she sees the wounds but stares on as she yells, “Get him to the med bay at once!”

 

Shiro’s pulling open the doors, running ahead of Keith as he steers a now whimpering Lance ahead of him to the bay as quickly as he could. Allura and Coran follow behind, hot on their trail as they discuss healing measures.

 

“No, not the pod.” says Coran, as they enter the bay. He rummages through a drawer next to the floating gurney they’ve sat Lance on. “His injuries need to be more extensive for a healing-pod to work, thank Altea they aren’t. I have something for more localised injuries somewh- _aha_!” he crows, pulling out a glass jar filled with a green jelly.

 

Lance looks up from the hand he’s now cradling against his chest. His left’s a lot more mangled than his right. “That looks just like food goo.” he squints at Coran, “Just fancier, maybe. I mean, it’s in a  _mason_ jar.”

 

Keith’s still fussing at his side, “Just let him have a look at it.” he says gruffly. He resumes fidgeting off to the side, not looking anywhere at Lance as the boy grits his teeth and uncurls his hand towards Coran. There’s a definite droop to Keith’s shoulders that Shiro notes with raised brows. He hunches in on himself as Lance accidentally lets out a soft whimper.

 

Coran’s soft cooing noises do nothing to placate Lance when he drops a glob of the goo on his hand and slathers it around. He yelps in shock at the cool-on-hot contact, but relaxes a bit once it starts doing its job.

 

“Leave it in overnight, it should be good as new tomorrow!” Coran says cheerfully, as if his words would dispel the tension in the room.

  
  
“ _Ooooh_ , this feels good.” Lance keens. “Definitely a much better alternative to eating the stupid thing.”

 

The doors to the medbay fly open with a resounding bang, and Pidge and Hunk stand at the entrance. It explains the lack of the running scientific commentary that usually would have filled the air as background noise while the remaining paladins along with Allura and Coran were congregating around Lance with alien substances.

 

Pidge looks angry. Hunk’s guilty.

 

She shoves the much larger paladin in front of her with a huff. “It’s his fault.” she mutters.

 

Hunk, to his credit, does nothing to refute her words. He hangs his head as he walks up to Lance to gather him in a bear hug before he thinks the better of it and aborts his movement, looking forlornly at Lance’s gooed up hands.

 

Coran leaves a swathe of bandages on the table and politely leaves with Allura, she seems restless, wanting to know what had happened, but Coran steers her away with a shake of his head and whispers something into her ears. She looks back at him with a puzzled stare, and turns back a final time to look at the paladins, two in particular, before giving up and following Coran outside. It’s just the five of them now.

 

“Lance, man. I am  _so_ sorry,” says Hunk earnestly. “I just thought that maybe you-” he coughs suddenly, and Pidge peeks out from around him, an innocent look on her face, but there’s a strange glint in her eyes that confuses Lance. Whatever Hunk was going to say went out the airlock. “Er,  _I_ really needed to get to my biscuits and I totally forgot to consider what I was doing and it was  _dumb_ and  _arghhh, I’m so sorry, buddy.”_ This time he does give in and wraps Lance up into a quick but soft hug, taking care not to touch his hands, and then hops away from him. “I should have known better than to get you up to the front so early.”

 

“It’s all right,” Lance huffs. “Aw, quiznak. You know I don’t know what to do when you go all boneless on me, dude.”

 

“I’ll make it up to you, I swear.” says Hunk.

 

“That’s not necessary,” says Lance with a frown. “ _Really_ , it’s time I got over this. Maybe what you did wasn’t the, uh, smartest thing you’ve ever done-”

 

“I’ll say, this was downright moronic.” Pidge grunts. Keith’s nodding vehemently at the side.

 

But hey! At least no one got hurt,” Lance looks down at his hands. “ _No one fell or anything.”_ he amends with a nervous chuckle. “so, I guess we’re good.”

 

Shiro clears his throat and everyone turns to look at him. “How about we avoid meddling in each others affairs for a bit.” he says. He shoots Hunk a stern look and the boy’s ears turn red at the tips. “Also, Lance you need to get those tied up and then you’re to go and take a break.

 

Shiro gestures to Lance’s hands, they’re coated in the jelly but it’s dripping off slowly.

 

“I’ll wrap ‘em up,” says Keith. Lance starts to protest, but he pushes back. “Unless you have a secret third arm somewhere, I don’t see how you’re going to manage.”

 

He starts to wrap the bandage around a wrist and the contact makes Lance wince.

 

“I bet Keith wouldn't mind seeing Lance's third arm.” Pidge says cryptically as she waggles her eyebrows at the two of them. Lance doesn't seem to have heard her, he's theatrically moaning  _“Ah, woe is me_.” over and over again, it’s that brand of annoying that turns into white noise eventually.

 

Keith takes his eyes off Lance for a hot second, choosing instead to look at Shiro with a tired stare and the two end up having a silent conversation, trying to get a point across only with expressions, Shiro's trying to quell his twitching lips because Keith's scowls are  _ridiculous_ —but then, when his face warps into something more panicky as Pidge opens her mouth again, Shiro decides he's done laughing at Keith because even he can sense the impending doom that's going to follow whatever comes out her mouth (no matter he's still not completely sure about what's going on between Keith and Lance, although the seed of an idea has planted itself and taken root) and quickly grabs both Pidge and Hunk, effectively silencing her in the act, and directs them to the doors.

 

“All right, it's getting late,” he says, “I'm sure you two have other things to do. Also, Coran's going to set the table for dinner—so get to it. We’ll see you two in a bit, I suppose?” he says to Keith and Lance, moving away slowly and  leaving his offer open ended. The doors slide shut behind them with a resounding thump.

 

It’s just Keith and Lance now.

 

Just two bros chilling. One’s slightly traumatised and the other’s perpetually confused. It’s the usual.

 

The work in silence for a few moments. Keith voice cuts through the the quiet as he start taping up Lance’s other hand.

 

“I'm sorry as well,” he starts.

 

“Oh god no,” Lance says, rolling his eyes, “we are  _so_ not doing this. I don’t even know why you’re apologising.”

 

“I saw your face,” says Keith pointedly. He gestures to the blood Lance left on his suit from their interrupted confrontation. “It’s pretty much my fault your hands looked like they went through a meat grinder.”  
  
“Okay, one—  _ew,_ my hands just got a major ropeburn, shut-up.” Lance stops to consider his next point. “And all right, I am pretty mad at you, that was  _dumb_ , Keith.” worry floods his face, and Keith hangs his head in shame, but he returns the look with a stubborn scowl.

 

“All right, but I still am really sorry,” he repeats, guiltily. “I didn't mean to scare you like that, I got caught up in the moment.”

 

Lance exhales deeply, and tugs a a corner strip of the bandage that Keith’s just laid on his hand, he gets a light rap across his unhurt knuckles for his efforts. “Yeah, okay. It's cool—like, don’t worry,” he stops and looks back up at Keith curiously. “But do you do that often?”

 

“What? Free falling?” asks Keith. Lance nods and Keith shrugs. “Yeah, sometimes—it's effective. I get down quicker and the jet pack softens the impact. And then I just hop off.”

 

Lance shudders, “That's crazy mad, dude.” he says, but his gaze grows more calculative and he shudders.  

 

It catches Keith’s attention, because the boy stops wrapping the bandage around his hand and regards him with wide eyes, “Wait, shit. Did you have flashbacks?”

 

Lance doesn’t answer right away and suddenly Keith’s crowding up into his personal space, looking at him intently, it’s obvious he’s anxious. “Oh no, fuck, Lance. I am  _so-”_

 

“Tell me you’re sorry  _one more time_ and it’s your funeral,  _cabrón.”_ Lance growls, all but done with Keith’s guilt. He knows Keith means well but if he has to look at that mournful, puppy dog face one more time, he’s going to have a conniption.

 

Hell, Hunk apologising made him feel weird. It was embarrassing, Lance didn’t know what to do with such heartfelt regret, it seemed wasted on him because he was fine! Somewhat at least, a  little freaked because of that dumb stunt, but peachy keen and A-OK.

 

Keith made it even worse because of the … feelings, plus this was the first time he’s seen Keith look so sorry before _. And good god, I need some breathing room, dude. Death by proximity induced UST would be a wild thing to put on my tomb._

 

The fact that he might have nearly done the exact same thing to Keith a few days ago totally goes over his head.

 

Keith raises his hand in surrender. “I just feel awful about this. I mean, I was supposed to help you but I nearly made it worse!”

 

“Can we just start this over? We’re just going in circles.” Lance grumbles. “Also, I think I might have an idea for the next time we go climbing.”

 

The tone in Lance’s voice makes Keith’s shoulders tense up. “Uh, what exactly do you have in mind?” he asks Lance cautiously.

 

“Oh, you’ll see.” says Lance, giving him an impish smile.

 

It from that one look alone that Keith knows that this is going to be a disaster.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hunk, c’mere for a second. I need your help.”

 

Pidge holds up her hand to show him a little bug lazily traipsing across her knuckles. It _sort of_ looks like a bug but it's thumbnail sized, shaped like a pyramid and grey with light blue stripes. It's wings remain tucked at its sides, vibrating with untapped energy.

 

“I think I worked out the coding for the quintessence pack, but the wings just won’t get up.” says Pidge with a whine.

 

“Oi, that’s not needed until we get to the Koorleck quadrant,” says Hunk with a frown when he looks up from the compressor he’s tinkering with. “And that’s nearly three movements away. Did you finish the data mining you were working on yesterday? We haven’t got much time to compile all those logs for their Chieftain.” He dives back into his work with a click of his tongue, deeming his attention is better reserved for the  _immediate_ task at hand.

 

Pidge scoffs and flaps a hand at him, “Of course, I’m no rookie,” she says, feigning indignation. “but I need this now for a test.” She holds the bug up and waves it around before bringing it right up to Hunk’s nose, the boy going cross-eyed as his focus remains on the bug in front of him. “So, are you gonna help me or not? I’ll throw in that motor coil I picked up from the Knaussa belt. I know you wanted it for Yellow’s shield.”

 

“What were you going to do with it anyway? I can’t see you having any need for it.”

 

Pidge bats her eyes at him in jest, “Leverage.”

 

Hunk grumbles as he takes the bug off her hands, grudgingly letting it explore his palm as it slowly tracks up and down the soft flesh under his thumb. “Hmm, the central gear’s stuck,” he finally says, sizing up the tiny machine. “Hang on a tick, lemme get out my micro-tools.” A hand slides under his work table and he brings out a little pouch that unravels to hold an even tinier set of equipment. Hunk selects a slim spanner-screwdriver-plier combi tool that’s barely as long as his pinky and  slides the flat edge of the screw-driver apparatus between the slit on the bug’s back.

 

He looks a little funny with his tongue peeking out past the corner of his mouth and his dainty grip on the bug, but Pidge refrains from comments because A) she doesn’t want to be a dick and b) if Hunk left in a huff she’d have to do it on her own and obviously she was the techie in this relationship, not the mechanic.

 

While he pokes around with his tools, he brings up a topic he’d been meaning to discuss with the younger paladin rather urgently. “So, uh,” he says, with a wry grin. “Keith and Lance, huh?”

 

Pidge blinks. “Lance and Keith.” she agrees. “I hope you aren’t thinking of poking your nose into whatever’s going on between them. Especially after yesterday.” she adds accusingly.

 

Hunk vehemently agrees, “‘Course not.” he says.

 

“Good, because I wanna have a go.” she says with a toothy smile.

 

Hunk groans, “Son of a biscuit. What is this? Pot?  _Kettle_?” he frowns as he gestures between the two of them with his teeny screwdriver.

 

Pidge rolls her eyes. “I’ve planned this out. No one’s getting into any scrapes or anything. I’ve accounted for every possible margin of error that I could think of.” she huffs before adding, “besides, I don’t think I can handle Keith’s doe eyes any longer. All that pining’s got me antsy. It’s like a bad Sparks’ novel.”

 

“I mean, that’s all of them.” Hunks snorts, “But honestly, if you think Keith’s got it bad, then get this—Lance spent nearly  _three hours_ with me at the hangar last week just going on and on and  _on_ about Keith. I needed him for a two man job and he somehow managed to cut our manpower to half a man!”

 

“That’s your fault,” Pidge says with no sympathy at all for her friend. “I bet you listened because you wanted the deets, you gossip, you.”

 

“I mean it was entertaining…” Hunk mutters. “But this is a serious problem! Do these two even realise they like each other?”

 

“Keith’s about as self aware as a stick.”

 

“Same with Lance. He just rants on about Keith's hair. And his eyes. And his muscles. And his smile— well, everything about him, really— but I’ve never actually heard him say the L-word.”

 

They exchange glum looks. “Guess they need some divine intervention, huh?” says Hunk finally.

 

“They brought this on themselves.”

 

They shake on it and Hunk goes back to the bug. He holds the screw-driver between his thumb and index finger, pinky held in the air like he would if he went out for tea with the Queen, but in spite of the comedic interval he presents, the bug in his hands whirrs to life after a few seconds of his tinkering and lifts off, looping lazily around his and Pidge’s head and beeping away merrily.

 

“Excellent!” Pidge crows. Light glints off her glasses, obscuring her face in a devious glow and Hunk believes that he’s been had.

 

“What are you gonna do with it now?” he asks warily.

 

“Oh, nothing much. Taking it out for a climb test.” she replies cryptically, tugging at his sleeve to pull him up behind her as she heads out of the room. “C’mon, I bet you’re going to want to see this.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Lance, I’ve concluded you’re many, many things—stupid is usually what comes to mind when I think about it, but  _suicidal_? This is a first.”

 

Lance stands at the edge of the cleft in the wall, a bundle of nervous energy shifting from one foot to the other. It's been exactly twenty-four hours since their last climb but Lance’s hands have just healed and he’s already dragged Keith back to their training sessions.

 

“You’re more of a masochist than you are scared. I’m almost worried that fear turns you on or something.”

 

Keith’s been trying to actively eschew Lance’s madcap idea of the day, but he's stuck on the ground, left to rely on his snark as his only weapon. He's tried to discourage Lance from making his potentially detrimental choice in every way possible that he could come up with bar actually going up and stopping him because he knows that the second he turns his back on the bean-pole, Lance is going to do something absolutely  _dumb_.

 

Their initial plan had been to wait outside the training room until the other showed up, and then walk in together. But Lance had given Keith the slip, and gone up the wall through the little hole at the back. Keith had come in second was had been patiently waiting outside the training room, unwittingly giving his partner the leverage he needed. It was on when Keith had finally given up on whatever vestige of patience he had and walked into the room himself that he realised that Lance had played him like a fiddle and was already up and peeking warily from the top, startling Keith and making him tense up and grab the tail end of the rope at his feet by instinct.

 

His latest verbal barrage would have normally escalated things until the two fell into a fist fight (hell, this would have definitely happened if he had tried this  _last week,_ Keith knows he's toeing the line) but it merely earns him an exasperated huff today. Keith initially thought getting Lance used to heights by standing high up above ground level would have maybe been an all right place to start off. Lance _,_ however, disagreed—which is why he’s currently peering down the wall, trembling slightly but with a determined set to his jaw. He fits the harness around his waist with practiced ease.

 

“Lance, I want you to think very carefully about what you’re about to do.” Keith tries again.

 

“Relax, Mullet. I got this.”

 

If Lance had been paying attention, he would have noticed the tremor in Keith's voice getting more and more pronounced with each passing moment. Instead, he bares his teeth at Keith in what could have been a smile—although it borders more on feral grimace—and takes a few running steps backwards, pushing back at the last moment and leaping off the edge.

 

In hindsight, Lance realises he’s not ready and tries to stop, but momentum pushes him over to fall with a strangled yelp leaving his lips.

 

(He  _don’t_ got this)

 

He would have gone right off if Keith hadn’t firmly pulled back on the rope and left Lance just hovering a foot away from the ledge, unable to move anywhere.

 

“You're a lunatic,” Keith calls out with a vengeance. “And definitely not good for my blood pressure.”

 

“Keith, buddy, let me down.” Lance pleads, trembling like a leaf in his harness, now that he's lost the bravado. He keeps his eyes trained on the blaring white lights above him and not at the floor below. “ _Please.”_ his voice cracks.

 

“I should leave you up there for another hour.” Keith grumbles, but he's already started lowering Lance to the ground.

 

Lance bumps against the wall on his way down a couple of times but he stays silent. Keith runs with this and continues to chide him on his way down.

 

“Of all the things you have done so far, Lance, this takes the cake.”

 

Lance wilts in his harness like a wet cat.

 

“I'm ninety-nine percent sure that you would have frozen half way and down and then who the  _fuck_ would have activated your fucking jetpack?”

 

Keith’s ranting, Lance still won’t look down but he knows the boy’s ears are going to be flushed an angry red and his eyes, narrowed and cold.

 

Lance was wrong though, his next words come out in a much softer and understanding voice than he’d ever guessed Keith was capable of. “Look, I know you’re trying hard, but you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I don’t know why this isn’t getting to you. You’re literally your own worst enemy at this point.” and then after a long sigh, he says, not unkindly, “Why’d you even tell me to come with you if you were going be an ass about it anyway?”

 

Lance mumbles back a pitiful reply. “Knewyoudcatchme.”

 

“What?”

 

Lance huffs, and then stumbles a bit over his next words. “ _I said_ —I knew  _y-you’d_ catch me.” He repeats, a  bit more slowly, a bit more bashful. "I trust you."

 

“Huh.” is all Keith says before going silent as he lowers Lance down the rest of the way.

 

He finally lets out a resigned exhale and Lance feels awful, it would have been better if he was still fire red and mad. His feet touch the ground and he finally let’s his eyes seek out Keith, but gloved hands grab his shoulders before he sees him, and Lance squeaks from the unnecessary manhandling.

 

“Uh,  _dude._ ” he says, looking affronted.

 

If he was being honest, he’s not really all that upset at the touch.

  
“Hold on for a tick, I need to see if that pull hurt you anywhere.” Keith spins Lance around to look at his back and slips a hand behind his armour and prods the crook between his neck and shoulder. Lance jerks at the contact because Keith’s hands are  _cold._

 

“Wait, no, don’t flip out,” Lance stops Keith before he combusts from the worry that’s building up inside of him like a pressure cooker. “Your hands are just stupidly cold. Geez, this is like sticking a popsicle against my neck. You’re supposed to be the guardian paladin of fire or whatever, what the hell.”

 

Keith digs a finger a little deeper into Lance's neck and smirks at the petulant whine he makes. “Stooooop.” he groans, shying away from his ice-cold touch.

 

“All right, you check out.” Keith says. His hands are still cupping Lance's neck, and maybe it’s just him, but Keith’s hands start to feel warm. Lance is rooted to the spot and now he’s the one pulling up the pressure.

 

Instead of doing anything about it, he leans his head the other way, baring his neck a bit more but he stills when he realises what he’s doing.

 

“Uh,” Keith's voice sounds funny, like he choked on his spit and Lance wants to turns around and check on him. The pressure lifts off his neck in a flash and Lance finds himself about to chase it, but aborts the movement.

 

Instead he turns around to face Keith, there’s a faint dusting of red across his cheeks and nose, but he turns away before Lance gets a chance to analyse it.

 

“C’mon,” says Keith gruffly. “If you're not goin to do this the right way, then at least I can keep your sorry ass out of trouble.”

 

And just like that, the spell is broken.

 

Lance blinks, and Keith’s turning around the corner to the hole in the wall. He stops and waits for Lance to catch up. They make their way up to the split, where Lance was just minutes ago.

 

“Huh.” says Lance. “Decided it was easier to do me in after all? _”_

 

Keith walk to the edge and for a moment there, Lance seriously thinks for a moment that Keith’s going to make him jump off again or something and trepidation violently stirs up in his gut once more, but all he does instead is sink down to his knees and then swing his feet over. He makes himself comfortable, and then looks back at Lance with a smirk.

 

“Sit.” he commands.

 

Relief floods his stomach and Lance hesitates, but does as he’s told and nearly falls off in the middle of it all because his eyes have been focused on the ceiling above him (just like he was earlier) Keith wraps an arm around his waist just in time, and yanks him back before he topples off. Lance bounces off the floor and settles in, heels digging into the cliff face below him.

 

“You know, I thought this would the safest way to get you used to heights, but even sitting around is potentially fatal to you.” Keith says, voice rumbling with held back laughter.

 

“The ground’s too far away,” Lance counters childishly.

 

“Just  _look,_ you big baby _.”_

 

Lance tears his eyes away from the bright lights above him, he looks at Keith first, his is soft, encouraging, there’s a hint of a smirk tugging at his lips that Lance wants to wipe off—he can feel Keith’s amusement rolling off him in waves and it irks him just a bit. He’s also growing a little hot under the collar  _yet again_ because Keith’s gaze holds him in place—dark, intense, violet eyes that nail him down to his seat and Lance can’t bear to look away. He also aware that Keith’s hand still rests lightly at the curve of his back, having never taken it off completely after he had pulled him back.

 

He can’t help it, he glances down at Keith’s hand wrapping around his frame.

 

Keith gives him a small smile but doesn’t pull away, “Can’t have you falling off again.” he offers. “Anyway, stop stalling and look down.”

 

“...There’s nothing to look at,” mumbles Lance, turning his head, “just-”

 

Ooooh, they’re so high up. Lance short-circuits but calms down when he feels Keith rubbing slow circles against his back.

 

“Relax.” he says. “Desensitisation helps.”

 

“O-okay.” Lance stays put, the deck looks tiny from their little ledge on the cliff and he’s freaking out, but he hasn’t thrown up or broken into a sweat so far so he counts it as a victory.

 

“We’re not staying up for too long,” says Keith after a few minutes. “but it’s still a good half an hour or so till I let you go anywhere.”

 

“Normally, I’d fight you for mouthing off like that, but I’ll let it pass just this once.” Lance mutters.

 

Keith makes an enquiring noise. “Hmm?” he says with furrowed brows.

 

“Like,  _till, I let you go anywhere.”_ Lance parrots back with some heat, but there’s no real bite to it. “You sound like an anxious boyfriend.”

 

Keith chokes and sputters, and Lance forgets about where he is for a moment, tearing his eyes away from the ledge they're both precariously sitting on to thump a hand against Keith’s back, drawing out a wheezing gasp from the dark haired boy.

 

“Dude, are you all right?”

 

Keith gives him a baleful stare, the tips of his ears still tinged pink. “Do you even filter out half the bullshit that comes out of your mouth?”

 

“What did I— _oh_. Uh, heh, as a matter of fact,” he says puffing his chest out and puffing; he shoots Keith his finger guns. “No. No, I absolutely do  _not_. You’re getting an uncensored look into my head, Billy Ray.”

 

Internally, Lance is screaming into the void because of his little slip up.  _Of course,_ Keith was going to fixate on the one thing he was trying to hide. He was mortified. If there was a merciful enough god out there, he’d be doing Lance a favour if he’d smite him on the spot.

 

Keith huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, “There’s really nothing to see in there.” he chirps.

 

“If I have nothing in my head,” says Lance, rising to the bait. “Then—then you have less than that in yours!” he looks puzzled for a moment and says, “Wait, why do I feel like we’ve had a conversation like this before?”

 

Keith just rolls his eyes. “Cause we have?“

 

“Oh, but-” Lance never gets to finish what he wanted to say because the rocky ledge below them starts to shift. “Ah, hell.”

 

A crack appears on the ground between them. The two paladins exchange looks of befuddlement before a resounding boom jars any movement and they jump up from their seats and leap to the side of the cavern, landing in a jumbled up heap against the wall just as the crack turns into a yawning split and moves apart.

 

“Uh.  _What the hell?!”_ Lance yelps. “Keith, we gotta get out of here,  _stat!”_

 

“Way ahead of you, buddy.” Keith’s already up and running, and then Lance feels himself getting pulled along in Keith’s vice-like grip towards the back of the cavern. “Run!’

 

They scramble towards the hole in the wall and leap through it. Lance can’t see anything this time, their little orb lantern’s probably smashed to smithereens back up at the landing. Keith activates his gauntlet for light, but it’s a phosphorescent piece and even when Lance lights up his own and grabs Keith’s wrist, their combined light is still not enough to muster a glow that goes past two feet in front of them.

 

The rumbling never stops, and Lance feels the walls moving in and he nudges in closer to Keith, still running as swiftly as they could without bumping into the walls.

 

Their tunnel should have flattened out by now, and spilt into the lower cavern, Lance is sure of it—instead they find a dead end, Keith nearly slams headfirst into the stone wall but luck was on his side as Lance yanks him back by the collar before just before he tastes gravel. It gets him a thankful smile that energises him, prompting him to start pulling at the loose stones in the blockade, but nothing yields, and so he moves on and activates his bayard. Lance lines up his blaster and cocks the trigger, but before he pulls the trigger, his gun flies from his hand, and Keith’s voice is loud in his ear as he tries to make himself heard over the rumbling that’s now reached an unbearable crescendo.

 

“The roof’s going to fall in on you if you shoot!”

 

“But that’s our only way out!”

 

“Hang on a tick,” Keith says urgently and he runs the perimeter around them as Lance reaches back to retrieve his blaster and deactivate it. “I can’t see shit, but there is  _another_ to get out of this,” his hand skips over empty space and he finds himself falling past the wall, righting himself up just before he hits floor, he calls out once again. “Lance, over he-  _argh!”_

 

“Keith? Keith!”

 

Lance runs over to where he can see Keith’s gauntlet dimly glowing with his heart in his mouth, repeatedly calling out Keith's name as he moves, but all he gets as a response is a low groan. He nearly trips over Keith’s form, laying in a disheveled heap close to the wall with a chunk of rock the size of a dinner plate laying near his feet. He’s still woefully disoriented but just coherent enough to say, “At y-your six, there’s another tunnel. D-dunno where it g-g-goes, but it’s still better than staying in here like a  pair of sitting d-ducks.” Lance suppresses a groan because  _clearly_ the boy he’s now gathered into his arms has no sense of self preservation.

 

“We’ll get to that in a mo,” Lance says shortly, “but first tell me where you’re hurt.” They needed to get out of the wall five minutes ago.

 

Keith just groans at Lance's fussing and ignores the question, trying instead to push up to his feet and away from Lance but the boy feels his that's hand cradling Keith’s head is warm and slick, and when Lance readjusts his grip, he sees blood thinly coating his fingers and staining his gloves. “Oh no, it clipped you over the head, didn’t it?” he says, freaking out just a bit.

 

Keith nods and the roof caves in behind them. “But n-nevermind that now.” he grunts as he gets to his feet, pushing away Lance’s imploring touches and swaying a bit in place. Lance responds by stubbornly hooking an arm back around his waist without any preamble, “Lets go!”

 

They make their way to the new tunnel Keith had found, and hobble up its winding passage. “I hope to god this thing doesn’t fall in on us,” Lance mutters as he pulls back a thick vine blocking their path to let Keith through. “After you, M’lady.” he says gallantly with a flourish

 

Keith rolls his eyes and raises a hand to his chest, batting his eyelashes at Lance as he does so, “Ach, my heart’s all a-twitter.” he croons and then crashes into the wall at his side.

 

“U _h,_ I guess I didn’t see that coming.”

 

‘Keith!” Lance grabs him once more and shakes his head, “That rock hit you pretty heard, huh? You’ve gotten pretty OOC.” his laughter is light-hearted, but his grip around Keith tightens just a bit as they move onwards.

 

Then he sees a light at the end of the tunnel. Squints at it. Then cheers.

 

“We’re getting outta here, bud.” His voice is buoyant. They’d been in the tunnels for barely five minutes, but enough was enough. He almost decided to carry Keith bridalstyle through the exit, but checks himself last minute. He's not sure what Keith would do to him after pulling off something like that. In the end they step out together slowly on the other side. The sound of blazing alarms assaults his ears, and it disorients him.

 

For a moment, Lance has no idea where they’ve landed. Then it comes to him and dread sits in his stomach.

 

“Keith, shit. We’re not going anywhere.”

 

“Hwazzat?”

 

Lance looks down at the boy slumped against his side in growing alarm. Keith's still fighting the pain, but it's a lost cause because it takes just a few seconds before his eyes flutter shut and his head rolls back against Lance's shoulder. Panic shoots through his heart as he looks at the boy in his arms and the plateau they've stepped out on.

 

In the distance, something rumbles.

 

Lance shakes his head to clear his scrambled thoughts. He has to get them off as soon as possible before the whole wall tears apart and takes them away with it.

 

He looks around him in desperation, looking for something,  _anything,_ to help them, but then faint buzzing reaches his ears. 

 

From right  _behind_  his ears.

 

He lifts his free hand to fumble around his neck until he comes back with a little buzzing pyramid. It dances lightly over his hand before it’s back splits open a second later with a bright flash of green light. “What the h-” Lance shrieks as he shields his eyes from the flash, but the words die in his mouth at when he peeks through his fingers.

 

Pidge and Hunk look down at him. Their worried looks are clear on their faces, but the feed scrambles every few seconds through the holographic display shooting out of the bug.

 

Pidge takes a quick look at Keith in Lance's arm and then at the crack tearing up behind them and turns back to look at Hunk. “Guess I didn’t account for  _everything,”_ she says mildly. “Welp.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say two chapters only? Heh.
> 
> Don't forget to R&R! Feedback is always good in my book, ayyyyyyy
> 
> (Edited: wow, I remember posting this at three in the morning and I've looked it over nearly a month later and there...were...so... _many_...typos.


	3. And We All Fall Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic is wrapped up! Things get super chaotic and, in the aftermath, Team Punk really push Lance hard after a confrontation of sorts. 
> 
> But honestly? That's what friends are for.
> 
> And half of this is just Keith and Lance blushing.
> 
> (BTW, I'm still looking for a beta, or if you guys notice anything, don't hesitate to hmu, lol)

 

About half an hour earlier:

“So, what exactly are we going to be using the bug for?” Hunk asks, his gaze curious as he and Pidge make their way to the control room above the training deck.

 

She stops them in front of the deck’s main doors and bends down to drop something on the floor. It’s the bug. It stays immobile between the two of them like some misshapen cockroach until Pidge pulls out a little joystick from her pocket and pushes on the knob and the bug slips underneath the doors.

 

“It also has a camera and mic,” says Pidge as she pulls Hunk up the stairs that are just a little bit ahead. “C’mon, I want to get this show on the road.”

 

They settle down into their seats and Pidge takes out her laptop. She pulls up a tab and Hunk watches on as Keith mouths off angrily up above him.

 

“- _I’m almost worried that fear turns you on or something!_ ”

 

Hunk snorts loudly at that, “Wow, we should have gotten up here earlier. This is gold.” he mutters with a gleeful twist to his mouth as Keith and Lance continue to bicker between themselves. “Could you angle the little guy up a bit more? I want to see what Lance is up to.”

 

“Yeah, just-” Pidge fiddles with the controller in her hand and shifts it minutely, “-there.”

 

Hunk groans when he sees Lance in his harness. “Why does that boy have a death wish.” he says forlornly. “Pidge,” he gets up from his seat with a determined glare in his eyes and rushes to make a move for the door. “I have to stop this, before Lance’s hands aren’t the only things getting wrecked around here.”

 

Tiny hands seize his wrist with alarming strength and hold him in place. “Wait.” Pidge says. “Just … let Keith have this.”

 

Hunk gives Pidge a blank look, blinking rapidly at her before a thunderous black cloud steals over his face. “Do _you_ , want _me,_ to just wait and let my best friend probably _die,_ because god knows he can be an absolute _idiot_ sometimes—just because you want Keith to have _… this?!”_ He gestures crazily at the scene going on in front on them as he gulps down lungfuls of air, visibly trying to calm himself down. “Look, I want them to figure this out together, _hell_ , I’d shove them into a closet together and swallow the key if that would have helped them get their heads out of their asses. But, guess what?” he waves an accusing finger under Pidge’s nose, returning her deadpan glare with an equally fierce one of his own. “That’s never going to happen _if one of them’s dead!”_

 

“Whoa, whoa, calm down Hunk,” Pidge’s eyes widen at the irate boy fuming in front of her. “You’re literally speaking in italics.” Oddly enough, Hunk’s glare at that moment would have made even the strongest of men, even _Shiro_ cower in fear, but Pidge holds herself firm. “I know you’re the president of the Lance Protection Squad and all that, but, just _watch_ , all right. I have it on record that Keith wouldn’t dare let Lance do anything reckless. Stop being such a drama queen, that’s Lance’s job.”

 

“His mother.” is all that Hunks replies with, his glare still fixed firmly in place, but he leans back with a defeated sigh.

 

“What?”

 

“His mother. She’s actually the president. From what Lance has told me about her, I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to take Zarkon on her own with a spork if she knew what was going on right now with Voltron and everything. I’m just the second in hand.”

 

Pidge laughs a bit at that and eases back into her seat. Shiro notwithstanding, Hunk is the most reasonable out of the paladins. He seems to have already simmered down a bit, but-

 

“What do you mean by ‘on record?’” Hunk asks.

 

“Oh, uh,” Pidge squirms in her seat for a moment, “Keith kinda told me something in confidence. Well, he told me not to tell Lance about it. But I’m keeping completely mum on this, for his sake.”

 

Hunk side-eyes her, unimpressed. "For  _now,_ I bet."

 

She throws her hands up in the air, “Believe me, you have no idea how soft Keith gets sometimes. I’m saving you from second hand embarrassment. He’s in over his head here.” she ends with a frustrated growl and Hunk hides a smile behind a hand.

 

“Ugh, all right, okay—I get it. We can go back to spying on whatever they’re doing.”

 

“It’s not _spying,_ Hunk. We’re just … accumulating data.”

 

“Hmm, you know, wording it like that doesn’t makes me feel all that better about-”

 

“- _Relax, Mullet. I got this.”_

 

Lance’s voice sounds tinny coming through the speakers, but the hint of a tremble in his voice makes Hunk and Pidge’s attention snap back to the screen.

 

Keith’s stressed out mutters of _ohno, nonononono. Lance don’t you dare,_ sets Hunk off once more as well, his momentary calm all but thrown out the window. Pidge clamps a firm hand on his shoulder to stop him from getting up again, and hisses at him to ‘just stay put and trust Keith, you absolute mother-hen.”

 

“But-but he don’t got this!”

 

When Lance jumps off, they both leap out of their seats. Hunk starts chewing on his gloves, and Pidge shoots him a disgusted look before turning back to the screen—Keith’s just hauled Lance back from the dead. “Phew,” Pidge says, looking impressed. “Keith’s got really good reflexes.”

 

“Don’t you think he’s laying into Lance a bit too hard?” Hunk murmurs when Keith starts lowering Lance down to the ground while giving him a solid scolding.

 

“You’d probably say the same thing to him, though.” Pidge says. “Keith’s just as worried as you are.”

 

Hunk’s eyebrows disappear under his bandana when Keith curses. “It might be a bit more.”

 

_“-Why’d you even tell me to come with you if you were going be an ass about it anyway-”_

 

_“-Knewyoudcatchme-”_

 

 _“_ Aw.” Hunks coos. “But Lance’s really pushing it.” he adds wryly.

 

Pidge cups a hand to her ear. “I’m going to assume you only understood that because you two are practically brothers from another mother.” When Lance repeats himself, Pidge starts grinning. “I’m saving that.” she says, fingers dancing across her keyboard. A little red circle appears in the corner, the moment’s finally saved for all posterity. “You’d have to pull teeth to get him to admit that again.”

 

When Keith starts his checkup, the tips of Hunk’s ears go red. He pauses the feed. “Er, it’s getting too mushy for me.”

 

“Oh, quit it, will you? I wanna hear what’s going on,” Pidge says, playing the feed. “Don’t look at the screen if you can’t handle a bit of romance. Besides, it’s not like anything’s actually happening.”

 

Hunk swivels around in his seat. “It’s not that,” he says slowly. “It’s just, I dunno, an intimate moment for them, like … _alone_? All of that unresolved tension’s driving me mad. Even if I’m not actually there, I still feel like I’m intruding.”

 

“Lance just called Keith a popsicle. That’s not intimate at all.”

 

“Gimme a few seconds, Pidge.” Hunk says firmly.

 

Pidge grunts in acquiescence and leaves Hunk with his back to the screen, turning down the speakers for his benefit. Eventually, he hears her tinkering with the joystick and braves a peek behind him. “Er, what’re you doing now?” he asks.

 

“Keith’s leading them back up, I’m moving the bug with them. Honestly, what even is this plan?”

 

Hunk shrugs as he turns back in and watches the camera lens adjusts itself. It’s darker all of a sudden. Which makes sense because they’re inside the tunnels, but the angle is off. Hunk can’t quite put his finger on the issue, but it nags at him.

 

“Wait, Pidge.” Hunks examines the feed further. Only the back of Keith’s head is in the frame, the camera tuned in on him completely. The frame moves erratically, almost like a go-pro. It makes sense now. “Is the bug … on _Lance_?” He says, noting his friend’s exclusion from the picture

 

“Yup, we’re hiding in his hair.” says Pidge. Hunk’s nose scrunches up in an inexplicable emotion.

 

“He won’t find out, will he?”

 

“Nah, Rover the second’s too small. Normally, he would have just floated behind them, but his mech’s still a bit noisy.”

 

The screen lurches as Lance takes his place on the ledge. The sweeping drop in front of him is empty. The focus shifts to Keith’s dark eyes, and then the hand curling around his waist.

 

“He's really not being subtle at all, is he?” he grins.

 

Pidge hums, “And I rest my case when I say these two are oblivious _idiots_.”

 

“Anyway,” says Hunk after a few minutes. “I rank this a ten on time-wasting, but there are two scaultrite biscuits with my name on them in the kitchen and I’m going to go get them.”

 

“You’re going to miss all of Lance’s freudian slips, he just called Keith an anxious boyfriend. They’re both going to combust at this rate.”

 

Hunk rolls his eyes at her narrative. “I am literally sitting right next to you, Pidge. I have ears.” He motions vaguely to his head. Anyway, they’re just bickering right now, and I bet that’s going to go on for a while—I’m not missing anything. I’ll just pop down and get back in a tick.”

 

He heads out of the room, despite Pidge’s insistence. She scoffs at him before turning back to her. “Their bickering _is_ the best part! Ya noob!” she yells at his retreating back.

 

She settles down once once again into her seat, but barely a minute goes by before Hunk charges back up the stairs, hair in disarray and eyes wide as saucers. Something’s wrong. “Pidge!” he gasps, voice shrill and anxious. “We have to get out of here, something’s happening to the deck—the vines are going crazy! They need us!”

 

Hunk’s entrance is almost simultaneous to Keith and Lance’s surprised yells as the ground starts to shake underneath them. Pidge looks at the screen in shock, she mouths a silent _what the actual fuck!?_ before nodding curtly, the soldier in her coming to the forefront. She grabs the controller and a small, rectangular box from the table.

 

“Pocket projector.” she says quickly to Hunk as an explanation as they run out the door. She pulls out a strap from the box and latches the entire contraption around a bony wrist. It’s blinks into life, the feed they were just watching mere moments ago on her laptop now fluttering through the holograph floating in front of them as they moved down the corridor and toward the deck. “Hopefully we can communicate with this.”

 

“Hopefully?” Hunk’s says incredulously.

 

Pidge yanks the doors doors open, “I just finished rerouting the speakers in the bug and I never tested it. I have no idea if it’s functional or not.”

 

They look at the screen and then go back to the feed. The chaos is overwhelming. Lance and Keith were running from collapsing passages on the inside, but the _outside_ was an ever bigger mess.

 

It’s an unstable mudslide, broken off pieces of the wall were tumbling down from above in furious torrents, the vines had somehow grown wildly over the span of the last few minutes and were zipping across the floor, threatening to tangle between their legs if they got careless. The wall had a solid split running straight down the middle, pushing the halves farther and farther apart to the sides and had no inclination of stopping until it hit the walls. There wasn’t any time to lose.

 

Keith’s scream breaks through the Pidge’s holographic gauntlet. They’re one man down.

 

Hunk swears under his breath. “Oh _god no_ , Keith’s hit—we have to call for backup, before things get really sticky."

 

Pidge nods and slams a hand on a blinking button by the door. The alarms go off but the two weren’t going to just sit around until the others showed up, they burst onto the scene.

 

Hunk pulls a training blaster off the wall and starts to pump lead into the vines, tearing into them nearly as quickly as they knit back together. He notes that the some of the blasted things have turned prickly with hardened thorns in the short while they had gone supernova, and curses loudly, but his destructive bent is enough to fend a clear path to the base of the wall if they run fast enough.

 

Pidge checks the boys’ status on her hologram. They’ve cleared the tunnels, but from what she can tell by the constant but brief checks of the screen flitting downwards, Keith’s nowunconscious. They’re also trapped at the plateau with now way to go.

 

The whole ordeal was an absolute SNAFU, but at least the top was untouched for now.

 

She stops Hunk from charging into the foray without her, asking him to wait for a moment before she activates the two way comm link between the bug and her gauntlet. “Hunk, she says, watching as the bug starts buzzing, drawing Lance’s attention—and a prodding finger—to it. “Help me get the sparring mats to the base. I think we’re going to need it. And I’ll need a knife as well.”

 

Lance’s face fills the screen, confusion turning into belated panic as the screen opens up to him. He leaps away from the flash with an aborted curse, but stops when he sees Pidge and Hunk looking at him. A collective sigh of relief escapes from all (conscious) paladins present.

 

Their relief is cut short, yet again, when a deep rumbling fills the air and it’s with growing horror that Pidge sees a crack tearing through the top and heading straight for the boys. She looks at Keith still immobile caught tightly in Lance’s arms and her heart goes out for her teammates. She’s going to get them out of this mess.

 

She recalls the words he used when she was trying to convince Hunk to join her with made up facts and incalculable margins of error.  “Guess I didn’t account for everything,” she says to Hunk, not feeling an ounce of regret. Her meddling was a _godsend_ today and there was no way she was ever going to apologise for that. “Welp.”

 

* * *

 

“Hunk! Pidge! You have no idea how glad I am to see you two, good grief.” Lance rasps. He starts babbling as he clutches Keith closer to his chest. “We-we were training, and then the wall started rumbling and everything _collapsed_ and now Keith’s out like a lightbulb and, _ooh my god._ Listen, I need to get down but there’s literally no way to do this, I _need_ to get him to a healing pod. _”_

 

“We know, Lance, we know Don’t worry.” Pidge says slowly. Her voice sounds scratchy coming out from the tiny speakers under the bug. “We can’t get up to you right now, the wall’s totally wrecked and the vines have gone out of control. But, I think you can come down to us.”

 

Hunk shoots him an encouraging grin, “You got this, bud. Just get into the harness, and we’ll get you down.”

 

Lance nods and steadily makes his way to the edge with Keith in tow. “What about Keith?” he says, eyebrows furrowing together. “Be careful with him.”

 

“Don’t you worry about your boyfriend, there are two of us and two of you.” Pidge says with a cocky grin as she slashes at a vine with a blade that Hunk had brought back with him. “We’ll be outta here in no time. Just tie him up.”

 

“Oooh,” Hunk waggles his eyebrows at Lance, “ _Kinky.”_

 

Lance doesn’t even bother to correct them. He just tosses them a look that clearly reads ‘ _n_ _ot now, you noob!_ ’ and struggles to slide Keith into the harness and loops an excess of the rope tightly around his shoulders to keep him upright while he went down. The assurance of eventually getting him safe is all he needs, he decides, heart lifting just a bit—but then he realises that this is his first foray down the wall all the way from the top, not to mention that this is all happening under the worst circumstances possible. Keith weakly shifts in his grasp and he makes his decision. His mullet man needs a healing pod ASAP, and he’d be damned if it didn’t happen sooner because of his cowardice.

 

“Keith’s in and he’s secure! I need him back in one piece!” he yells into the bug. He get amused, affirmative nods in return and resumes the task of slipping on his own gear single-handedly because he refuses to let go of Keith and put him on the floor.

 

They’re both in now and Lance peers over the ledge, trying to stomp down his his fear—his heart’s pumping harder than a racehorse.

 

He sees Hunk and Pidge at the bottom, a ring of burnt, dead foliage marking a landing spot around them, and gives them a weak thumbs up. The bug next to him relays Pidge’s message, “Hurry up, and get your ass down here.” she looks around her with a worried gaze for a few minutes and then hollers into the comm, “These vines might come back any moment for us now, quick!”

 

He brings Keith to the edge and presses a kiss to his forehead before reluctantly sends him over (nearly dropping him when the unconscious boy shifts slightly with a groan), and Hunk is at the end of the rope and holds him in place—his strength was necessary to bring Keith’s dead weight down safely in one piece. Lance watches for a few seconds as Keith slowly disappears down the edge and hangs back for a few moments, trying to prolong the inevitable. The split’s just about upon him, and for a second, Lance almost wishes it would just swallow him whole. But  in the end he reasons that, either way, he’d be falling and Pidge’s angry shrieks ringing from the bug’s speakers weren’t really helping, so he crawls to the edge and goes over.

 

His rope erratically shudders as Pidge adjusts her grip on her end. Lance bites down a scream and screws his eyes shut, using his hands instead to feel his descent down. They continue like that for a bit, the Red and Blue paladins slowly being inched down side by side as the world crumbles around them.

 

They’re about to pass the horizontal crevasse that marked the midpoint when shit hits the fan. It’s Hunk’s desperate muttering that forces Lance to open his eyes. He looks at Hunk in confusion, but the he’s paying no attention to anything but the rope in his hands. He’s tugging furiously at the end but for some reason, gets no slack. Keith’s somehow _stuck_.

 

A cursory glance reveals that the vines have become somewhat murderous. A thick vine has coiled itself around Keith’s rope and halted his descent—the newly formed thorns piercing through its flesh start slowly fraying the rope.

 

Lance realises, with dawning horror, that if he doesn’t do something, Keith’s going to become roadkill.

 

“Hunk! Pidge!” He screams, “Both of you, _stop pulling!_ ” If anything this should at least slow down the fraying and give Lance a moment to come up with a plan.

 

Hunk and Pidge can’t really make out what’s going on so high above them, but they hold the slack on the rope just as Lance throws his weight on his line. He hears Pidge’s cry of alarm as the movement adds on to the weight she’s pulling, but he continues, nevertheless, until he’s swinging through the space between both lines. Hopefully, this would let him grab Keith and they could go down one rope once his breaks off.

 

It works, Lance reaches out and grabs Keith just as his rope finally snaps and pulls him tightly against his chest. He calls out for Hunk and Pidge to resume lowering the two to the ground. Hunk takes over from Pidge, and she switches to take care of the vines that have started to close in again on them.

 

“Hunk, you gotta hurry up, man.” she says as she lifts a hand to wipe the sweat off her face. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to handle this.” She slices through a vine just before it makes a grab for Hunks ankle. “Fucking hell.”

 

“Language, Pidge.” Hunk titters, hoping to lift the mood. He gets a scathing glare for his efforts.

 

“Fucking _heck.”_

 

Pidge is forced to divert her attention to the vines around Hunk and ends up abandoning the task of securing a perimeter, but it eventually becomes clear that going against the vines single handedly is impossible.

 

She gets pulled in kicking and screaming, as a slimmer, smoother vine wraps around her ankle and yanks her down, “Hunk! The vines got me! These things are practically immobile once they grab you,” she warns tugging against her restraints, “Be careful, they’re going to come after you.” she calls out to Lance, “Get ready to brace yourselves!”

 

“Where are the others?!” Hunk says with a worried frown. “We’re running out of tim-aw _man_!” he hollers, as the vines grab him, wrapping around his wrists first and then his waist before pulling him back and down to the floor.

 

The jostling ends up jerking Keith and Lance up the wall a bit. Lance shrieks, at a loss about what the next step was going to be. He feels the slack in the line grow and the next thing he knows are the turret of air shooting past him as he and Keith rush to the ground. He’s mildly aware of Hunk and Pidge yelling out in alarm.

 

Lance fires up his jetpack, praying that the thrusting power is enough to hold the weight of two grown ass men. Despite the fact that he’s literally living out his worst nightmare, Lance has no time to panic. He twists mid-air to slip under Keith, hoping to cushion the unconscious boy’s fall.

 

Ten feet from the ground, the pack gives away, Lane feels himself being suspended in mid air for a split second as the last burst fights against the ship’s artificial gravity, before he crashes to the ground with Keith tightly cocooned against his chest.  
  
The blood rushes to his ears, and he lays immobile on the floor—thoroughly winded—which come to think about it, feels soft? Lance expects to feel the chill from the hard ground bleed past his gloves when he presses a palm against the plane beneath him, but instead all his hand sinks shallowly into it. He grins blindly around him when he realises what happened, they’d landed on a training mat!

 

It’s been a series of unfortunate events right from the word _go,_ and Lance isn’t surprised anymore when he sees about a dozen vines headed towards him and Keith in his periphery. With a groan, he drags Keith to lean him against the wall and summons his bayard, grinning as he feels it take form in his hand. When he finally looks up from the damage he’s dealt out, he catches sight of Hunk and PIdge trussed up like chickens on the floor.

 

“I gotchu!” he says with a Han Solo grin as throws up his finger guns, and then winces when he feels a sharp sting somewhere around his left elbow. He promptly blows up the vines tying them down—once the last of the tendrils fall away from his friends in charred scraps, he knocks out a wider perimeter around their little group.

 

Hunk and Pidge join him within minutes, but without their weapons. “Stupid weeds got ‘em” Hunk growls, and narrows his eyes at the towering vines in front of them.

 

“Well then, you two stay behind me and try not to get killed. Hunk, buddy, you need to bring Keith in with you. I’d take him myself, but,” he lifts up his left arm mid shot, the one that had been gingerly holding up his rifle blaster in place. The elbow sits weirdly in it’s socket—It’s dislocated. “I’m kinda... _compromised_. I can’t feel a thing right now though, because of all the adrenaline running in my veins.”

 

“Dude, the universe needs to cut you a break.” Pidge says in disbelief. “Gimme your blaster, I’ll shoot.”

 

“Not if you want your arm to get ripped off, spud.” Lance retorts, not pausing in his pursuit of the straggling vines. He’s already accumulated a fine sheen of sweat across his forehead, and it’s not just from his straggling excursion down the wall with Keith, the vines multiply like faster than spring bunnies, and are ten times more mobile, he starts to feel light-headed. “When was the last time you handled a gun?” he says with breathy puffs between a wry grin. “Besides, I don't think bayards just work like that, it’s linked to me.”

 

“You can barely hold that thing up yourself!” Pidge huffs, but she lets it go in lieu of Lance’s logic.

 

A flurry of movement catches Lance’s attention out of the corner of his eye, and he turns to find Hunk wrestling with a vine as thick as himself, one arm out of commision—just like Lance, because he’s holding on to Keith’s still prone form. “Lance,” he calls out desperately, and Lance moves quickly to protect his friend, calling Pidge to move in closer to them as he drills holes into the fleshy trunk. But a sense of resignation is starting to build up in his bones. He’s going to fight tooth and nail until he passes out, at best he can keep the vines at bay, but getting out would need a second weapon. Or a miracle. He shoots rapidly straight into the centre of the biggest vine in his line of sight.

 

The vines suddenly go still, curled up in the air like a huge, quivering tidal wave, and with bated breath, the paladins warily take stock of the situation.

 

“What.” says Pidge.

 

“I don’t know how much longer we’re gonna have, but we need to make a break for it!” Lance bellows. He runs over to Hunk to heft half of Keith’s weight onto his shoulders despite his friend’s protests. “I won’t drop him,” Hunk says irritably, out of an overgrown sense of apprehension, but Lance refuses to listen. Pidge smirks at the exchange but hurries up behind them, looking backwards ever so often because the sudden stillness unnerved her. And sure it _seemed_ safe, but it reminded her of the calm before the storm.

 

“Tread carefully,” she says. “And don’t step on the vines, I reckon they might go off on us again if we trigger anything.”

 

“Ten-four! ”

 

A soft groan permeates the air and Keith stirs between Hunk and Lance, his thrashing breaking the tense atmosphere that was quickly replaced with more agitation. “Where are we?” he asks groggily, still on the verge of falling back into in another mini coma, but he stubbornly holds onto his consciousness. He looks around him, eyes widening at the vines towering around him.  “Uh, are we back down?” he says slowly, “When did _that_ happen?” He nods at the frozen wave just before them before he untangles himself from his comrades—despite their protests—and wobbles upright.

 

“ _Whoa,_ there Bessie,” Lance says in alarm, latching onto his shoulder to keep him upright. “Careful, my dude. The wall’s a mess,” he adds as an answer to his question. When Keith opens his mouth for what everyone is eighty-five percent sure another question, Lance places a hand over his mouth, ignoring the warmth that met his palms, and fights the blush that threatens to creep up his neck as he tuts at Keith. “Nope, no talking. Run now, ask questions later. In the meantime, just lean back on Hunk and me, we’re getting outta here.”

 

No one’s a hundred percent sure how the events played out after that, their accounts varied given the _events_ that proceeded. But the one thing that they were all sure of was: Keith obstinately dancing out of Lance’s grasp, with plaintive assurances of him being all right and ready to move on, and then drunkenly planting a foot backwards and straight into a thick vine the size of his head.

 

Chaos ensued.

 

Their great, Kanagawa vine-wave, shivered and shook a couple of times. Keith had no idea what was going on, but he gritted his teeth and pulled out his bayard.

 

“Come _on_ , son.” Hunk groaned tiredly. He seemed to resign himself to whatever was to transpire next, but readied himself, holding up his fists and silently praying that he could somehow make it work.

 

“It was nice knowing you boys,” Pidge grumbled. She kicked at a thin but sturdy vine curling up dangerously next to her. “Come and get me, ya weeds!”

 

“W-what?! Guys, don’t give up!” Lance yells back at his team. He starts another round furious lead pumping, pushing a hugs hole into the wave just as it crashes into the team. He can feel Keith slashing away, moving back to back in tandem, but it also puts him in a position to feel Keith shivering tremulously under the strain of his injuries. “Keith,” he says softly, after a few more shots. “How’s the head?”

 

“Inconsequential,” he can hear the smirk in Keith’s voice through the strain. “Also, fuck. I nearly forgot. _PIDGE!”_

 

Pidge doesn’t pause from the vine she’s currently wrestling with, but her glasses flash in Keith’s direction, it’s all the prompting he needs. He pulls out his Marmoran knife, and slides it hilt first towards Pidge, who catches it just before it gets swept away. This time she gives Keith her full attention, eyes wide and in askance. “It’s on loan, so I want it back.” he says and Pidge laughs and slashes through the vine she just was pinning down earlier.

 

They have a fighting chance now, Lance thinks, a beaming grin letting everyone around know of his growing optimism. “I like our odds better now,’ he says.

 

Keith addresses Hunk, “I’m sorry,” he says ruefully. “I only had two on me.”

 

Hunk, it seems, is doing fine without a weapon. Through pure, brute strength he’s managed to pin down a handful of vines and knot them together, rendering them a feebly quivering jumble. “S’all right.” Hunk grunts after flashing him a quick thumbs up. “I’m good.”

 

They start moving towards the centre of the deck, and the vines are somehow thicker, but their morale’s too high to let that bother them.

 

The team hear yelling on the other side of the thick of vines they’re breaking through. “The others are here!” Lance says in delight. “Steady on now… _let’s go_!”

 

He blows another huge hole through the vine-wall, just as Pidge and Keith slash a big arc by his sides. Another grunt from Hunk tells him that he’s barreled through a bunch of his own set of vines, and everything stops moving once more.

 

Everyone starts talking at the same time.

 

“-Holy shit.”

 

“-Are we good now? At last? Finally?”

 

“-They better not start up again.”

  
  
“-Yeah, don’t move, Keithy-boy.”

 

Everything around them suddenly crumples. It’s fascinating. The vines sink weakly to the floor, turning dark green and then brown and finally just crumbling into … _nothing_.

 

Allura, Shiro and Coran stand at the end of the deck. The two Alteans have their hands pressed to the floor, a circle of cyan light encircling them. Shiro’s prosthetic arm is slowly fading back to normal from it’s previous purple glow as he unfolds from the protective crouch he h.e had been holding over them

 

“Is everyone all right?” he asks, running across the deck to meet them.

 

Keith and Lance have somehow gravitated close to each other, arms supporting the other and the two slide down to sit on the floor.

 

“Just fine,” Lance says and Keith nods vigorously next to him. He feels his eyelids drooping and mumbles. “Just...need a...nap. That’s the...ticket.” Everything starts sounding muted. Like he’s underwater at the local pool or something. He feels Keith slide down with him as well, and he’s vaguely aware of alarmed yells, “ _Keith, Lance! Both of you, wha-_ ”

 

_Wait, Keith? Is he all right?_

 

And everything goes dark.

* * *

 

“I _live_.”

 

Lance tips out of the cryopod and into Hunk’s arms just as Keith pulls apart from the hug he’s sharing with Shiro. Before he can even get a good look at Keith, however, the Yellow and Black paladins switch, and Pidge hovers around the two, before she pulls them together into a bone crushing hug of her own.

 

Lance winches. “Ouch, Pidge. Boney arms, my dude.”

 

Instead of complying, she digs it in further. “We were so worried!” she says. “You two went out like synchronized nightlights—Hunk nearly had kittens.”

 

“Well, we’re okay now, right?” he looks at Keith imploringly, _urgently,_ twisting in Pidge’s grip to inspect Keith’s head. There’s a nearly imperceptible scar moving into his hairline but apart from that Keith seems completely healed. What he doesn't realise is that Keith also has an agenda of his own, and he’s under scrutiny next, “What happened?” the red paladin murmurs as he examines Lance.

 

His hands find their way to cup Lance’s chin, and pulls his head down with a frown marring his face. Lance wants to straighten out the fold between his eyebrows, “Where did you hurt yourself?”

 

Lance feels his cheeks heat up at their proximity, “Er, I dunno, all I had was a sprained arm.” he lowers his head, mostly because he’s embarrassed of one—all he did was just mess up his arm a bit. He’s not sure why he blacked out, it’s not very... _heroic_ of him, and two—Keith had grabbed ahold of his arm and was-

 

_So close, so close, so close, so clo-_

 

 _“_ Ahem.”

 

The two jump apart like children caught with their hands in a cookie jar. They had completely forgotten the others in the room. Lance knows his cheeks are flaming and he does his best to keep his face straight when he raises his head to face his teammates. Pidge and Hunk have huge, shit eating grins on their faces, and while Hunk has the decency to temper down his smile, Pidge just reminds him of a Cheshire cat.

 

Shiro speaks from the side, and _god dammit_ , he’s also trying to temper a smirk. "It’s good to have you two back.”

 

Keith nods weakly, voice hoarse he says “-Yeah.” He’s looking nervously at Shiro for some reason, and Lance nearly asks why but Allura and Coran make themselves known to the party.

 

“Oh, thank _goodness_ you two are all right.” Allura says as she rushes in.

 

“You were both pretty banged up when we finally got to you,” says Coran. “worse than a pair of hoodlumps after a knarl ritual.”

 

“Knarl?” Hunk whispers to Pidge from behind his hand.

 

“Mating.” she replies just as softly, but her grin is still firmly in place, and Hunk shakes his head in amused disbelief

 

Lance chokes on air, probably the only one to have heard her apart from Hunk and now he doesn’t know where to look anymore.

 

He’s distracted by a flurry of movement on his other side. “Er, does anyone actually know why the rock went ballistic on us in the first place?” Keith asks. Trust him to get right to the point.

 

At this, Coran suddenly looks flustered. Almost ashamed. “Right. About that.” then he stops, venturing no more information.

 

Allura glowers at his side. “Oh, go on, you brought this on yourself.” she says after a few moments go by in silence. To Lance’s surprise, the rest of the team (bar Keith, who looks just as confused as he feels) nods along sagely.

 

Coran sighs heavily, looking properly chastised. “I, ah, might have misidentified the Galho’od rock for its more, er, _carnivorous_ cousin—the Mortiqum pebble.”

 

“Wow, space nomenclature never gets old, huh?” Hunk snickers.

 

Coran frowns at him before continuing. “I had been growing it with a bit of the ship’s quintessence—I might have rushed the process a bit and the wall became a bit, well, unstable.”

 

“I think homicidal works better.” says Pidge.

 

“So what happened to it?” Lance finally says. “The wall? The last thing I remember was the vines just dissolving into nothing,” he shrugs and looks at Hunk. “Like Spid-”

 

“Stop it. I will not have you bring up quite possibly the saddest moment from the MCU.”

 

Coran looks at him mildly. “It’s all right,” Lance grins, “Earth reference, I’ll explain later. Back to the wall—is it still up?”

 

Coran shakes his head, “No, it’s gone. Allura and I took back the energy I had supplied it with.” he pulls out a tiny little lump out of his pocket. It’s a little stone, cracked right down the middle. “It imploded on itself so it won't cause us anymore problems.”

 

Keith looks at the rock with narrowed eyes, “That thing nearly managed to get the four of us.” he says incredulously. “It’s the size of a peanut.”

 

Coran holds his arms up in a universal gesture of helplessness, “What can I say? That’s magic for you.”

 

Keith nods, stifling a yawn, and then it’s game over for everyone from that point.

 

“All right, you two,” Shiro addresses him and Keith sternly. “Bed. Sleep it off, you’ve both been through a lot and I don’t want to see your faces until tomorrow. And _then_ , we’re having a talk about using the deck without any supervision.”

 

Hunk and Pidge take this as a cue to get back to their workstations, sniggering at the kid glove treatment their friends are getting. But, then they’re thwarted as well, when Allura blocks their path out the med bay. “And where do you think you two are going?” She says, “Just because you didn’t need a pod doesn’t mean you aren’t tired. Off now.” she shoos them away in the other direction, towards the corridor that lead to their rooms.

 

“But I need to know if Rover 2.0’s still functional!” Pidge protests. She pats a pocket of her cargo three-fourths, her battered up bug drone is presumably in there somewhere.

 

“And we have to review footage!” Hunk tries, and then slaps a hand over his mouth, “er, I mean, wipe up the deck?”

 

Lance jumps on them, “Was Rover that thing that opened up the holoscreen just before we got down?”

 

Hunk looks away with shifty eyes, “...maybe.”

 

“And you said there was _footage_? It recorded back?” he continues, the tips of his ears going pink. “Were you two spying on us?”

 

“Okay, now, we weren't _spying._ Just … accumulating data.”

 

“That doesn’t change anything!” Lance fumes, face now completely red. Whether it’s from anger or embarrassment remains a complete mystery, even to him. “I’m going to bed.” he says dramatically. “I have to rest _and_ get over a betrayal.”

 

The doors whoosh shut behind him as he exits the bay, but he’s now aware of a second pair of footsteps walking behind him. The stompy thuds each step makes is a dead giveaway to whomever was walking behind him.

 

He let’s them continue a bit, away from the others before he speaks. “Keith.” he says, as a way of greeting. 

 

The shorter boy sidles up to him. “You’re mad.” he muses.

 

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.” Lance stops and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Agh, sorry, didn’t mean to go off on you as well, you did nothing wrong.”

 

Keith looks unaffected, if anything, there’s a faint wry twist to his lips. He’s amused. “Why are you mad? I thought you liked the cameras” he says instead with a teasing smile, waving off Lance’s apology with a flicker of his wrist—it’s all good.

 

Lance splutters, “It’s a matter of privacy!” he says in indignation. “Like I need to worry about NSA levels of invasion when we’re up in _space!”_ Truth is, Lance is a filthy liar—and at this point, he just sick of surveillance videos in general. He knows that anyone looking at that video would hone in onto his raging affection for the boy next to him right away like it was circled with a neon sharpie and had little love hearts drawn all over it. He hopes that the stupid bug got squashed on their way down and the data’s unretrievable.

 

He groans silently into his hands, _ugh, he should have tried to get the bug away from Pidge._

 

“Lance.”

 

“Keith.”

 

Keith scowls at Lance, “Oi.” he says as a warning. ( _For what?_ Lance wonders) And then asks, “What happened exactly? Once we reached up I mean. I never got a chance to ask earlier.”

 

 _And thank the gods for that._ Lance knows that if he gives him a play-by-play the cat’s going to get out of the bag even before Pidge opens up Rover. So he settles for a watered down version instead. “Oh, uh,” he starts, and then kicks himself mentally for sounding so nervous. “After we reached the top, the tunnels back down caved in completely and we were _totally screwed—_ but luckily Pidge and Hunk knew where we were, so they came over to help. So you got knocked out just as the wall literally started _crumbling_ apart so we went down on the harnesses—but by the time we got down, the vines went mental and tried to off Hunk and Pidge,” here, Lance puffs out his chest in a false bravado, “but I got them back down! Anyway, they had lost their weapons halfway through, so it got a bit rough for all of us bit there—but then _you_ got up and things got better.” he says with a small smile. “And _then_ Coran, Allura and Shiro showed up so everything went back to what it was.”

 

He takes in a lungful of air and wheezes, the entire recount done entirely in a single breath and now he feels a little light headed. “Welp. That’s about it!” he says and readies himself to make a run for it. “Good job, bud.”

 

Keith holds him back with a hand to his shoulder. “You’re not telling me something,” he says, his lower lip sticking out in a small pout. It’s adorable.

 

“Uh, _no?”_ Lance says and his voice wavers—Keith gives him an unimpressed stare. “Pretty sure that _I_ was the one awake for the entire thing. I would know, you know, if I left out something.”

 

“How did we make it back down?” Keith presses, eyes wide an imploring. He gives Lace a scowl for good measure.

 

“Like I said, I stuffed you into a harness and then chucked you over. Then Hunk lowered you down to safety.”

 

Keith backs off, eyes downcast and eyebrows furrowed—he’s puzzled about something. “I just thought that ....maybe... _nevermind_ —I probably dreamt it.”

 

“Maybe.” says Lance, he doesn’t want to ask what Keith had dreamt up, doesn’t want to confess to anything yet. “Well, goodnight. Or day—I’m not sure what the time is right now, but I-” he fakes a deep yawn, “-need some serious shuteye.”

 

He gives Keith a final smile and high tails it out the corridor and runs to his room. His heart doesn't stop racing until his head hits his pillow and he gives into the darkness.

 

* * *

 

The next few days come and go, and everyone’s settled back into their usual routines once more. Things proceed as normal—wake up, eat, train, goof off for a bit, and rinse and repeat.

 

There’s a new undefined tension underlying every interaction between Keith and Lance now, and Lance tries to convince himself that he hasn’t done anything wrong.

 

“I haven’t screwed this up, yeah?” he asks Hunk a couple of days after the training deck fiasco. He’s supposed to be helping him clean out a space oven (“Not everything in space needs a prefix, Lance.” Hunk had admonished him, but Lance just stuck out his tongue at him and went on to twiddle the knobs of their _space_ stove) but instead he’s sitting on the countertop drumming his heels against the cabinet. "

 

Hunk gives him an uncommitted hum. “What did you do exactly?” he says, voice muffled by the cabinet in between them.

 

“He asked me what happened after he passed out.”

 

“And?”  
  
“I told him exactly what happened! Except…”

 

“Hm?”

 

“I left out the drop. And the kiss. Or anything that I said while I was panicking. He told me he knew that I was bluffing and I told him I just threw him over the wall and left the rest up to fate and you two.”

 

Hunk’s eyebrows disappear into his bandana. “Kiss? You kissed Keith and I missed that?”

 

“Is that all you got from what I just said? Yes! But on the forehead! For good luck! Or something—I dunno, I thought you guys saw that! I- _arghhh!”_ He slams his head into his hands and coils up on the counter. “What if he got up in the middle of all of that and now he thinks I’m some sort of creep!”

 

Hunk gets up and gives Lance a tight, one-armed hug—his other hand’s all pruned up and sudsy,  “I mean, _I’m_ pretty sure that he was passed out for all of this. Maybe you did something else?” he offers.

 

Lance wails. “That just makes things worse, because he hasn’t come anywhere near me ever since we talked outside the med bay, he doesn’t sit next to me when we eat anymore, he stopped coming over to my dorm and right now—I spent all day looking for him yesterday and it’s like he was three steps ahead of me all the while, I always seemed to miss him by _thaaat much”_ he holds his thumb and index finger together as close as he can without letting them touch it. “It’s like that time he went off with the Blades. Just, poof _, gone_!” He slumps against Hunk with a sniffle.

 

“Why haven’t you just gone ahead and told him that you like him, like you had done with Allura? Ever thought of doing that?” Hunk asks.

 

“Gee, why didn’t I think of this earlier?” Lance deadpans. He give Hunk the stinkeye, “Keith doesn’t like me like that, man. And I know I’ve flirted with the Princess, but I guess…” he wraps an arm around himself and looks away mournfully. “...that was different. She still stayed friends with me even after I managed to make things weird, and honestly, I got over her really quickly. But Keith—I really don’t expect anything to happen, and I just _can’t_ lose him as a friend. I-I know I won’t get over him for a while.”

 

Hunk’s heart goes out for his forlorn best friend, it really does. But sometimes, he’s just astounded by how stupid he is. _Doesn’t he get it?!_

 

“Have you considered that maybe,” Hunk drawls, crawling under the cabinet once more, “Keith’s not avoiding you because he’s _mad_ at you and just-” Hunk stops his musing as the kitchen doors open. Pidge runs in, slightly out of breath and her hair in an even larger mess than usual.

 

She barrels into the counter, and pulls Lance down by his hoodie to stare at him ominously right in the eye. “-Lance—you—he. _Run.”_ she says between gasps.

 

“English, Pidge.” says Lance, staring at her with wide eyes. “Or Spanish, but, no pressure.”

 

“Keith found Rover the second and watched the clip. He’s on the warpath right for _you.”_

 

“Aw crap. Hunk, buddy.” Lance rushes like a switch has been turned on in him, slamming his hand against the kitchen door button like it would make it open any faster (it didn’t). Good talk, my man, looks like  reciprocation won’t matter now because _I’ll be dead!”_ He runs out, and takes a left.

 

“Keith’s coming in from the training deck!” Pidge yells.

 

Footsteps, and then Lance runs past the door in the opposite direction. “Then I’m going the other way!”

 

The door slides shut, and Hunk looks up at Pidge. His eyes go wide, “Dude.”

 

Pidge looks completely unaffected, her hair’s suddenly back to normal, she’s not panting anymore, and is in charge of all her faculties. She gives him a smug smile. “Keith’s actually coming in from the bridge. Honestly, if Lance just stopped to think for once he would have seen right through me.”

 

“Yeah, better you than me, I think if I had to spell it out for him, he’d spontaneously combust.”

 

* * *

 

_Curse Pidge and her useless directions!_

 

Lance had gone right, taken two lefts, another right and collided right into something warm and solid right in front of the observation deck.

 

He looks down to where his hands have fisted in the collar of the person he’s bumped into, and his body locks up. He titters nervously when he sees Keith glaring at him. “Oh no, I’ll just— _goooo._ ” he says and tries to step around Keith.

  
He tries to untangle his hands from Keith’s shirt but Keith clamps his own mitts around Lance’s wrists in a firm grip, and, whoops, now he’s trapped.

 

“You and I need to talk.” Keith says, eyes glinting darkly in the dimly lit corridor. He gestures to the door that’s opened up to the tiny deck with a nod. “Now.”

  
It’s not like he has a choice, now, is it?

 

With a sigh, Lance allows Keith to lead him to the center of the deck, the doors close behind him like the final nail to a coffin.

 

He gulps and Keith levels him with a long stare. “You,” he says, pointing a finger at Lance and digging it into his chest. “blew your jetpack.”

 

Lance nods, going silent for once.

 

“And you, then clung on to me like a koala.” there’s a small smirk tugging at the corner of Keith’s lips.

 

Another nod.

 

Keith’s face goes pink all of a sudden, “And you gave me a ki-”

 

“All right!” Lance breaks and he yells. The walls of the observatory feel like they’re closing in on him. Keith stops, surprise giving him a deer in the headlights look. “I did, all right? I was scared that you were not going to get out in one piece—that something would _happen_ to you.” He looks up at him, with tired eyes. “Man, I don’t know what you want from me.”

 

Keith’s gaze is piercing, almost desperate. “How do you feel about me?”

 

Lance gapes at him, like he hadn’t made it obvious. “You’re important to me.” he says simply. “When I realised that you could have fallen, it reminded me of my sister, and there's no way I'd let something like _that_ happen again.”

 

Keith nods, but freezes mid-way, and Lance can’t understand why he suddenly looks so _devastated._ “Like your sister, huh?” he says in a strangled voice.

 

Lance hums in an affirmative, “Yeah.” he says, and _why is Keith still looking at him like that?_

 

That frozen look shifts into a weak smile and it looks off on Keith’s face _._ It's all wrong.“Yeah,” he parrots. “I’m glad you think of me like that.” Every word that comes out of Keith’s mouth sounds false. His voice is still weird. He leans in to give Lance a thump on his shoulder, “Good to know. And, i-I feel the same—you’re really important to me as well.” and that goes right through Lance’s bones and warms him. He gives him a sunny smile, which Keith looks like he’s trying to return, but once again, it’s forced.

 

“What’s wrong?” Lance asks. And that seems to hit something in Keith—wakes him up—and his face turns impassive.

 

“Nothing, I just—my stomach.” and he starts to move towards the door.

 

“Oh no,” Lance says with a frown, the concern radiating off him in waves. “Let’s get to you to the med-bay. Was it something Coran made?”

 

Keith shakes his head, “I dunno.” he says quietly. “I’m just going to sleep it off.”

 

“I’ll come with-”

  
  
“No, it’s fine. I just need a nap. Long day and all that.” and with that, Keith leaves the deck.

 

Lance stares at his retreating back and then the shut doors in mild confusion, and with a dirty feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him that something is not at all right, that Keith had been looking for him for _something else_ and somehow he’s made an even bigger mess of who knows what.

 

“-You. Are. Such. An _. Idiot!”_

 

Lance yelps an leaps a good six feet into the air. “Who’s there!” he yells at the disembodied voice. He fists his hands and slides into a battle ready position. “I’m unarmed, but I’ll take you on!”

 

“Hush, you big baby.” it says, and then he sees Rover the second blinking on his shoulder.

 

He tears it off his person. “Stop following me around, Pidge. Hunk! I know you’re there!”

 

Hunk mutters an apology, but Pidge tears into him. “Forget that!” she says. “Are you seriously going to let him just leave?!”

 

Lance scowls at Rover, whos now hovering quite complacently in front of him, not knowing if his camera was on or not. “I don’t know why he did that! He clearly wanted to get away from me, and ... I gotta respect that.”

 

Pidge snarls in frustration. “You two are going to kill me with all your pussyfooting.” Lance thinks he hears a grunt of agreement coming from Hunk, and wow, he’s confused.

 

“And I suppose you know _exactly_ what got Keith’s sword in a knot?” he taunts her.

  
  
“Yeah,” Pidge snarked. “You!”

 

“Oh, har har _har_. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out! Pidge, seriously, if you know something, quit horsin’ around and tell me.” he chokes a bit on a ‘Please” right after that.

 

“Just—recount this last conversation, will you?”

 

“He started confronting me with all the stuff I did, and then I couldn’t take it so I just came out  told him he was important to me!” Lance deflates and continues.“ And then he got all weird and left.”

 

“Lance, you idiot.”

 

“Hey, I really don’t appreciate the insults. In fact, I-”

  
  
“ _YOU BRO-ZONED HIM, YOU BLOCKHEAD!”_ Hunk finally roars.

 

“What. The bro-zone doesn’t exist.”

 

Pidge mimics Keith with a ridiculously growly voice. “Lance, I know you kissed me, tell me you love me.”

 

Hunk puts on a fake Lance voice, “Oh Keith, you remind me of my sister.” he chirps

 

“None of that happened, I-what?” Lance says incredulously “And I said-” _Oh._

 

 _“_ D’you think it finally hit him?” he hears Pidge whisper after his silence drags on for a few ticks.

 

“I mean, if he didn’t—let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised.”

 

Lance speaks in barely a whisper, “Oh. My.” The rest of the conversation’s falling into place, Keith's previous blushes, his insistence, their other conversations.

 

“Holy shit, this is happening.”

 

“Wait, but how are you so sure he feels the same way” Lance nearly screams.

 

“We just know!” they both chorus back. Annoying. “Just go get him.” Hunk adds.

 

That seems like enough for him. He’s done hiding his feelings. Lance runs for the door, but before he leaves, he grabs Rover as the robot tries to follow him and stuffs him into an overhanging, pull out cupboard.

 

“I love you guys, but you need to stop being so goddamned nosy.” he says in reply to the outraged yells coming from behind the door. “And thanks! I owe you one!”

 

Lance runs.

 

He runs to Keith’s bedroom and then to the training deck—no one is in either room, despite what the boy had said earlier The bridge is empty save for Allura and Shiro, the two are going over schematics for their next battle. Coran’s in the medbay, wiping down the pods and Lance wormholes out of the room before Coran can catch a glimpse of him and hand him a washcloth. He goes back to the kitchens and only sees Hunk and Pidge sitting around and looking surly. They shoo him out and he runs, and runs, and runs.

 

Until he gets to the Lion’s hangar half an hour later.

 

The Castle’s just really big, okay?

 

Blue fills his head, cool and comforting. She purrs in affection.

 

Lance sends her a mental image of Keith, and lets the joy and adoration that floods his senses whenever he see or thinks of Keith (which is nearly all the time) leak into their link. He shows her the hope he’s been toting from the events that have transpired over the last few days—and then, he shows her the apprehension he carries—his fear of rejection—and the will to fix this misunderstanding he’s gotten them into.

 

He senses her amusement. Oh, she’s obviously known all along. But Blue also sends him an image of Red, and then another one of her paladin walking up to her and climbing in.

 

“He’s here!” Lance cheers and gives his lady lion a beaming smile. “Thanks Blue.” he feels her encouragement radiate between their link as he

 

As he moves makes his way across the hangar to where Red sits.

 

Red’s a lot smaller than Blue, but still so… _Intimidating_. He growls as Lance draws close, eyes flashing and making him gulp.

 

“Heeeey, Red.” he says, feeling his heart race as the Lion’s growl turns deeper.

 

Red's headlights go off.

 

“Have you seen your paladin anywhere? I believe he sitting in you right now.” Lance asks politely.

 

Red stays silent, now looking completely motionless, even his growling has stopped.

 

“Hello?” Lance whispers up the Lion.

 

No answer.

 

Lance feels like he's grasping at straws, “Please, Red. I goofed up. I have to talk to him and sort this out. He’s...upset with me, I think. No, I _know._ ”

 

This time, Red suddenly wakes up and roars, his metallic maw actually opening and shutting with a snap. Lance pales but holds his ground, deciding instead to walk all the way up to the Lion's hull.

 

“Look, just let me in for a second.” he pleads softly, resting his head against Red’s plate. “I just need to tell him.”

 

“Tell me what?”

  
  
Lance jumps around with his hand over his heart. “Why are all of you out to give me a cardiac arrest?” he moans.

 

Keith’s stands at the door with an impassive look on his face but his hands curl to grip the polish rag tightly in his hands. “Forgot something?” he says in that same guarded tone he used earlier.

 

And _whoa_ , that stings. That’s how he had sounded when they all first met, when he was reserved and unflinchingly stoic. Over the course of the last two years, things had become a lot different. He knows all of Keith tics better than the back of hand, and right now, everything indicates that Keith just wants to get the heck outta dodge from here.

 

Lance gapes at him for a few moments, not really knowing how to proceed with the situation going south already.

 

Keith sighs, looking tired. “Look, I’ll just go-”

 

“Hang on a tick, I just needed to get warmed up.” Lance interrupts, waving his hands around in an attempt to stop Keith from leaving. When Keith glares at him, he feels a bit more comfortable, this was a reaction he knew how to deal with. “I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier.”

 

Keith raises a brow, but steps forward. Towards him.

 

“-About the way I, uh, _feel_ , about you.” Lance takes a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to bro-zone you.”

  
  
“The bro-zone doesn’t exist.” said Keith wryly. But he definitely looks more animated now.

 

“That’s what I said!” Lance cries. “Hunk and Pidge don’t seem to follow my sentiments—but they gave me the kick to pants that I needed with that.”

 

Keith backtracks “You spoke to Hunk and Pidge about the conversation we had earlier?” he asks, brows furrowing, ears going pink and, oh no, he’s mad again. Maybe.

 

“Ah hell, I shouldn’t have said that—but, I couldn’t have helped it, really—they came to me. I had _no_ idea that they were listening in.” Lance leans in close and his hands smush Keith’s cheeks together, bringing him in closer. “And forget about that for a second. When I said that you reminded me of my sister, I meant that I thought I was about to nearly _lose_ you like I did with her—that you’d get hurt, _or worse._ And I refused to let that happen to you.”

 

“You’re terrified of heights.” Keith voice breaks, sounding muffled because Lance is still squashing his cheeks. “That’s why I came over—to yell at you—earlier today. _You_ could’ve gotten hurt.”

 

“Same sentiments, my dude. And I didn’t,,” Lance says with a small smile. And then, shyly. “But I’d do anything for you.”

 

Keith gasps, eyes wide as he stares at Lance, who looks down, grudgingly pulling his hands away from Keith’ face. He feels his cheeks run hot.

 

Lance wonders if he’s said the right thing. Keith hasn’t responded immediately, so he pushes on, “I’ve really, really, liked you for a while now, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think you’d feel the same.” he starts rambling, “But, like, I _might_ have had an epiphany? I mean—er, Hunk and Pidge kinda kickstarted it—once again I’m sorry for not just _talking_ to you about this beforehand. But I was scared and, now, It’s just that some of the stuff you do clicked? I thought you might have liked me back, were you _flirting_? I dunno, but—I-I mean, it’s cool if you weren’t. Maybe. Er, I forgot where I was going with this, but I figured I might as well as-”

 

He’s forced to stop when he feels Keith gently lift his chin up to look at him. “I’m going to kiss you now, if you’d let me.” he says in askance. There’s a small smile on his face and his cheeks have a soft, ruddy tint to them.

 

Lance has to restrain himself from throwing himself at Keith. He settles for an enthusiastic nod, not trusting himself to speak.

 

They meet halfway, lips pressing together in a small, tentative kiss, but to Lance, it feels like clouds have parted for them. Keith tilts his head, just _so_ , and Lance buries his hands in Keith hair. They melt together, leaning against Red. The kiss deepens and Lance sighs into Keith’s mouth, feeling the other boy’s smile against his lips.

 

They continue like that for a little while longer, before they’re forced to break apart for air. “Just so you know,” Keith says with a smirk, “I’ve been flirting with you for the last two years, but thanks for noticing.”

 

Lance groans and nuzzles into the side of Keith’s neck. “I am _so_ sorry.”

 

“I mean, I didn’t really know what to do either. So we’re good.” Keith pauses, “Also, you were incredibly brave the other day, just thought I’d let you know.”

 

Lance feels like his cheeks are testing their limits today. How was it even possible for them to feel this hot? “Thanks.” he croaks, incapable of saying anything else. He settles for another tiny kiss.  

 

Red suddenly rumbles, startling Keith and Lance and making them topple over in a tangled heap onto the floor. They share a look before bursting into laughter.

 

“All right, Red, we’ll go be mushy somewhere else.” Lance laughs “You hungry?” he asks, hand slipping into Keith’s. “It’s about time for lunch.”

 

“Depends, am I in the mood for food goo or … food goo?”

 

Their laughter carries down the corridor as the walk to the kitchens. On the way there, they bump into Hunk and Pidge coming out of the observation deck. Pidge has Rover the second in her hands. “Oh ho,” Pidge smirks at them after putting on a very obvious act of gawking at their linked hands. “My work here is done.”

 

“Ah, but there are going to be consequences for you two,” Keith says with a playful glint in his eye.

 

“I’m not scared of you Keith. I have dirt on you!”

 

That makes Keith pause, “But I have nothing to hide.” he says with a confused frown.

 

“So, you don’t remember telling me that you stayed up those nights pacing Lance’s door after the wall training exercise just because you were worried, and _that’s_ how you got tangled up in his ‘training’ in the first place? Just to keep an eye on h-”

 

Keith outraged voice cuts her short. “ _Stop talking, Pidge!”_

 

Pidge runs away from the two of them, cackling madly with Hunk in tow. Lance looks at Keith, and he’s redder than his jacket. “You’re cute.” he says, pecking Keith on the cheek. He tugs on his hand, “I bet you can’t catch up to them before me though,” he says with a lazy smirk before rushing ahead.

 

Keith powers through his blushing with a grin of his own. “You’re on.”

 

And then they take off after Hunk and Pidge with a war cry that echoes down the halls.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first fic I've ever finished, so, I'd like to know what you guys thought of it! Also, I don't know how to write physically intimate scenarios, so concrit is very much welcome. Rate and Review, please!
> 
> (Also season six was beautiful and now I'm going to die waiting for the next one.)
> 
> AND - I have another fic in the works, it's a bigger, multi-chapter, Paranormal AU that's just a wee bit more general (but being me, it probably will have a looot of Klance in the end), and will have Shay and Matt making appearances in it as well.
> 
> So in light of that, if you guys know any Halloween or just generally spooky songs, I'd like them for ... research (???) purposes, haha.


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